Kenya police have conducted two separate raids this week on three mosques in the port city of Mombasa, as the state continues its hunt for weapons and supporters of al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabab fighters in neighboring Somalia Al Jazeera reported.

The coastal city, and the country’s second largest,  has for long been known as a tourist destination due to its white sandy bitches and attractive marine life. However, increased Muslim radicalization coupled with dissident calls for the coastal region to secede from the main land has turned the region into a hot bed of the global war against terrorism.

Richard Ngatia, a local police chief, told Aljazeera that investigators had found three machetes, a grenade, two 10-litre petrol bombs and a bomb detonator during the operations during the Thursday raid. 109 people were arrested during the raid.

A similar raid on two different mosques on Monday left one person dead. Reuters news agency, quoting police officials, put the number of arrests then at 251.

“The mosques have been radicalizing youth, training and encouraging them in jihadism. We also recovered a booster used to accelerate explosions … and literature about jihadism,” Al Jazeera quoted Ngatia saying on Wedensday.

Kenya has come under a series of bomb and grenade attacks since it sent its troops into Somalia in late 2011 to pacify  al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabab fighters. The East African nation is looking to break up Islamist militant networks it blames for a series of attacks in the capital Nairobi as well as along its Indian Ocean coastline.

In hindsight, tourists numbers have dwindled this year starving the country’s economy the much needed foreign exchange and contributed to the near 5 percent fall in the Kenyan shilling this year to a three year low of 90 to the dollar. Tourism is one of the leading hard currency earner for the nation alongside Tea, whose price has also suffered from a supply glut on the international market.

Robert Kitur, Mombasa County police commander, told the Reuters news agency that authorities had been gathering intelligence for a long period and it was time to act.

“These operations have started and will go on until all places of worship especially mosques in Mombasa are set free from terrorist and criminal elements,” Kitur said.