Kenyan 'al-Shahab recruiter' shot dead in Mombasa

A radical Muslim cleric in Kenya, Abubakar Shariff Ahmed, has been shot dead on the coast of the city of Mombasa on Tuesday, police and witnesses say.

Abubakar Shariff, also known as Makaburi, had been listed by the UN as a recruiter for the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shahab group, reports Reuters.

Police told journalists that when Abubakar Shariff Makburi was waiting outside a courthouse to be picked up after attending a court hearing, a vehicle approached sprayed him and another person with bullets.

"Our brother Abubakar Shariff Makaburi has left us. He is dead," a preacher at a mosque in Kisauni, a Muslim-dominated area near Mombasa, said through a loudspeaker.

"May his soul rest in peace. He has died a brave death."

A Reuters witness saw Makaburi's corpse with bullet wounds to the body and head, before police took it away. Dozens of Makaburi's supporters gathered nearby demanding police hand over the corpse. Police fired in the air to disperse the crowd.

Makaburi's death could stir fresh unrest in the coastal area where most of Kenya's Muslims live. Muslim youths clashed with police for three days in February after a man was killed during a police raid on a mosque used by firebrand preachers.

Kenyan police have dismissed Islamist charges that they are to blame for extra-judicial killings. Two other leading Islamists have been killed in the past two years.

The east African country, the region's largest economy, is still reeling from an al Shabaab attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi in September in which at least 67 people were killed.

Kenya is trying to break up militant recruitment networks among its Muslim community in an effort to end attacks by Somali Islamist militants and sympathizers bent on punishing it for sending troops to Somalia to fight al Shabaab rebels.