THURSDAY, 5.30PM
HEAVILY armed assailants killed seven policemen and eight civilians in an attack in the Kenyan Indian Ocean port city of Mombasa on Wednesday.
On Wednesday night the assailants first attacked a police station in south Mombasa, killing a policeman, ransacking its armoury and freeing suspects in police cells. Then they moved to the Tourist Police Post Unit next to a ferry crossing and burnt it down, before engaging the regular police and the paramilitary General Service Unit in a gun battle. This clash left six other policemen and eight civilians dead. The assailants then set fire to a number of buildings attacked people with machetes.
Police were unable to say how many guns had been stolen from the armoury.
Witnesses said the attackers were highly organised and monitored police communications from a radio they took from a dead policeman.
The attack sparked an exodus as people with bundles of belongings on their heads and children in tow headed for safety to Diani, further south.
Initial reports ruled out tribal motives for the attack. Mombasa was shaken in 1992 by tribal violence sparked off by a quarrel over a stone quarry between the local Digo tribesmen and ethnic Luos working in the quarry.