Arsonists razed 100 roadside kiosks and dozens of houses around Mombasa yesterday after five Kenyans were killed and many hurt overnight by unidentified attackers. This latest outbreak has puzzled the authorities. The government sent in the army to back police and paramilitary units battling to end five days of violence in the area, having withdrawn the soldiers a day earlier. Police figures showed 31 people had been killed in the fighting, which erupted on Wednesday night with an attack on a police station.
Several thousand foreign tourists on the coast north and south of Mombasa were advised to stay in their hotels. But officials said no visitors had been caught up in the violence, for which they could not give a motive.
Local residents said most of those killed had originally come from outside the coastal region. They referred to leaflets, handwritten in Swahili, which had been distributed around the region.
"The time has come for us original inhabitants of the coast to claim what is rightly ours. We must remove these invaders from our land," the pamphlets said.
A reporter for the Reuters newsagency, Mr Edmund Kwena, said a petrol station was attacked and a pump set on fire and he saw scores of buildings torched yesterday.
"I personally counted up to 100 kiosks completely burned down. Dozens of houses were also set on fire in the Diani area, a popular tourist area south of Mombasa," he said.
Kenya's roadside kiosks mostly sell clothing, fresh fruit and vegetables, and tourist souvenirs.
Truckloads of soldiers were immediately deployed in the area and senior army officers arrived by helicopter.
A man was shot by police and his body burned by angry villagers at Bombolulu, north of Mombasa, yesterday. Survivors of the overnight attacks had accused Bombolulu residents of responsibility for the violence.
Residents said dozens of houses in the Maweni and Kongowea areas north of Mombasa were burned down yesterday.
Mr Karl-Heinz Straus, chairman of the Coastal Kenya Association of Tour Operators, said he was worried about the effects on tourism, which last year brought in about £300 million from 770,000 visitors - over half of them to beaches in the Mombasa area.
The wave of attacks has raised the political temperature in the east African state, where elections are due this year.
They have heightened fears of a repeat of the ethnic violence that hit several parts of Kenya before multi-party general elections in December 1992, the first in the country in 26 years.
Mombasa, a city of nearly one million, is seen as the stronghold of the unregistered Islamic Party of Kenya (IPK), and has become increasingly opposed to President Daniel arap Moi's ruling Kenya African National Union (KANU).
A senior intelligence source told Reuters in Nairobi that the government preferred to use police and paramilitary units rather than the army.
"We are trying to pin down the identity of the attackers and establish whether the violence is organised and connected or mere acts of isolated crime," the source said.