Kenya expels scores of Somalis after round-ups

Nairobi (AFP) - Dozens of Somalis were expelled from Kenya on Wednesday, officials said, as security forces maintained a major crackdown on suspected Islamists that has seen thousands rounded up in the capital.

Kenya's Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said 3,000 people have so far been detained in the operation, and 82 of them flown back to Somalia's Mogadishu. He said hundreds more were still undergoing identity checks.

The operation, reportedly involving more than 6,000 police and elite officers, started on Friday and has focused on Eastleigh, an ethnic Somali-dominated district of the Kenyan capital known as "Little Mogadishu".

The crackdown, which has seen people held in police cells or a football stadium in Nairobi's Kasarani district, follows a spate of attacks in Kenya by suspected supporters of Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab rebels.

Three blasts in Eastleigh on March 31 that killed six people appear to have triggered the latest police crackdown, although frequent swoops on Somalis have been taking place since last September's deadly siege of a Nairobi shopping mall that was claimed by Shebab.

Somalia's ambassador in Nairobi, Mohamed Ali Nur, confirmed the expulsions and said that those sent home included women and children.

The UN's refugee agency has said it was "concerned" at the wave of arrests and has demanded access to those detained.

In a statement this week, the UN agency said it understood Kenya's security concerns, but urged security forces "to uphold the rights of all those arrested and to treat them in a humane and non-discriminatory manner."