A moderate Muslim cleric has been shot dead by gunmen in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa, police say.<\/p>\n
Salim Bakari Mwarangi, a vocal critic of Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamist group, was shot after evening prayers on Tuesday, the city’s police chief said.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s Robert Kiptoo in Mombasa says he had received death threats from those who accused him of being too close to the government.<\/p>\n
Six clerics, both radical and moderate, have been killed in Mombasa since 2012.<\/p>\n
Kenya’s coastal region, which has a large Muslim population, has been hit by a series of attacks blamed on al-Shabab, which is linked to al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n
‘Government spy’<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n “Gunmen on a motorbike slowed down, shot at him and sped off,” Mombasa’s police chief Robert Kitur told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n “Police have launched an investigation and manhunt for the attackers.”<\/p>\n Our reporter says Mr Mwarangi, who preached in Mombasa’s Likoni suburb, was unpopular with radical Muslim youths in the city because he campaigned against radicalisation and drug use.<\/p>\n Some regarded him as a government spy, he says.<\/p>\n The government has provided security and transport for locals wishing to attend his burial about 55km (34 miles) away in the fishing town of Msambweni, our correspondent says.<\/p>\n In recent years, the authorities have been trying to break up militant recruitment networks in Muslim communities in Kenya.<\/p>\n Supporters of the three hardline Muslim preachers who have been shot dead in Mombasa since August 2012 accuse the government of being behind their killings – charges the authorities denied.<\/p>\n In April, Abubakar Shariff Ahmed, known as Makaburi, who had been listed by the UN as a recruiter for al-Shabab, was killed near Mombasa.<\/p>\n Before he died he had said he supported the group’s attack last year on the Westgate shopping centre in the capital, Nairobi, when 67 people died.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A moderate Muslim cleric has been shot dead by gunmen in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa, police say. Salim Bakari Mwarangi, a vocal critic of Somalia’s al-Shabab Islamist group, was shot after evening prayers on Tuesday, the city’s police chief said. The BBC’s Robert Kiptoo in Mombasa says he had received death threats from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":62431,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-62430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/62431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}