Kenyan Church Leader Shot Dead in Mombasa City

By Barnabas Aid
Tuesday, January 20, 2015

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Church members who met to worship together on Sunday 11 January are in shock after church official George Karidhimba Muriki was gunned down by unidentified assailants on a motorbike, just inside the church entrance gate, in the Majengo neighbourhood of Mombasa city.

It was reported that police stopped the gunmen from getting inside the church, preventing greater carnage. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but many suspect Somali Islamists Al-Shabaab to be behind the incident.

The attack is reminiscent of a shooting on 23 March last year, also in Mombasa, in which armed militants burst into a Sunday worship service, opening fire and killing six people. And in November, the group went on a rampage in the same city, targeting and killing Christians after police raided mosques thought to be involved in the recruitment of Islamist militants. Although Kenya is a Christian-majority country, the city of Mombasa is Muslim-majority.

Al-Shabaab promised revenge against Kenya after its government sent troops into Somalia to help in the fight against the Islamist group in 2011. Since then, Kenya has experienced repeated violence from Islamist radicals. In Mandera county, which borders Somalia,militants attacked a bus on 22 November, separating the non-Muslim (mainly Christian) passengers from the Muslims and shooting all 28 of the non-Muslims one by one. Just a few days later, 36 non-Muslim workers (including many Christians) were singled out and killed at a stone quarry, also in Mandera county.

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