adminNAIROBi — A Kenyan suspected of killing tourists in the coastal city of Mombasa in July was shot and killed by police in a raid at his home yesterday, police said.
In two separate incidents, a Russian female tourist and later a Ugandan male and a German female tourist were shot in the Old Town in the Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa and their personal belongings were taken.
Mombasa county police commander Robert Kitur said police shot and killed Ismael Mohammed, a Kenyan national, in a dawn raid in Mombasa’s Bondeni neighbourhood.
“We have been looking for him for months and each time we got close, he escaped our dragnet,” Kitur said, adding that they recovered a grenade in the raid.
Kitur said that a suspected accomplice of Mohammed’s was also shot, but escaped the scene.
Haki Afrika, a human rights organisation in Mombasa, questioned why the suspects had been shot rather than arrested.
“The killing of suspects is unacceptable and the officers responsible must be held accountable,” Hussein Khalid, the group’s executive director, told Reuters. “You cannot kill someone without subjecting them to the due process of the law.”
There have been a string of attacks along Kenya’s coast, most of them claimed by the Somali Islamist group al Shebaab, including the killing of 65 people in Lamu County in June and July. The attacks in Lamu and in Mombasa have hit the country’s tourism industry, especially after some Western governments warned against travel to the Indian Ocean resorts. — Reuters
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