Top Muslim cleric Mohamed Idris shot dead

What you need to know:

  • The Muslim preacher was "shot only once in the stomach" shortly before dawn as he headed to prayers at a mosque.
  • Mombasa County Commissioner Nelson Marwa said it was a drive-by shooting, with gunmen firing from a motorbike.
  • Sheikh Idris was chairman of a key mosque that was recently taken over radical youths.

Gunmen in Mombasa on Tuesday shot dead a Muslim preacher who was a vocal opponent of the radical preachings of Somalia’s Al-Shabaab insurgents, police said.

Mohamed Idris, chairman of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya, was "shot only once in the stomach" shortly before dawn as he headed to prayers at a mosque, Mombasa police chief Robert Kitur told AFP.

Mombasa County Commissioner Nelson Marwa said it was a drive-by shooting, with gunmen firing from a motorbike.

"They shot him in the abdomen and he was pronounced dead at the hospital," Marwa said.

Idris was chairman of a key mosque that was recently taken over radical youths. (READ: Coastal imams living in fear of rebellious youths)

"There was a power struggle at Sakina mosque -- where he was supposed to be installed as a sheikh -- between his supporters and another radical group opposed to him," Kitur added.

WESTGATE ATTACK

Idris's death is the latest killing of Muslim leaders in the city, although previous shootings have been of radical leaders accused of backing the Shabaab.

In April, prominent hardline Muslim cleric Abubaker Shariff Ahmed was shot dead.

Ahmed, better known as Makaburi, was a vocal supporter of Osama bin Laden and had described last year's attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, which was claimed by al-Shabaab fighters, as "100-percent justified".

In August 2012, radical preacher Aboud Rogo Mohammed was also gunned down, sparking deadly riots, and in October last year his successor, Sheikh Ibrahim Ismail, met the same fate on a road near Mombasa.

Kenya has been hit by a series of attacks since invading Somalia in 2011 to battle the Shabaab, later joining an African Union force battling the Islamists.

Mombasa has also seen a series of attacks on churches as well as power struggles between rival Muslim factions.