Kenyan police raided an Islamic school on Tuesday, arresting two teachers and taking around 100 children into protective custody in what police described as a counter-terrorism operation involving foreign law-enforcement agencies, Reuters reports.
Police described the school in Likoni, south of the port city of Mombasa, as a centre for indoctrinating young men and children with militant ideology.
A police source says “the place has been monitored for a long time,” said a police source who asked not to be named.
A local Muslim leader Sheikh Hassan Omar confirmed the operation but said there was no evidence of any illegal activity.
“A group of local and foreign police officers raided the madrasa (Islamic school) where the pupils were sleeping and took them with their teachers,” Omar told journalists in Mombasa.
“There are nearly 100 pupils and four madrasa teachers who have been arrested and detained at police headquarters and nobody is telling us what crime they have committed.”
Omar said the officers asked for identification documents, including birth certificates from the children, and their teachers before they took them.
