NAIROBI: Somalis who fled war in their homeland say they fear militants are snatching or luring away their children from the safety of their new life in Kenya to fight in the failed Horn of Africa state.

Representatives of Al-Shabab, seen by Washington as an Al-Qaeda proxy, are battling the government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed for control in the latest twist of an 18-year civil war.

Worried Somali parents in Kenya say Al-Shabab representatives are targeting children on the streets of Nairobi or at Islamic centers popular with Somalis who have taken refuge in the Kenyan capital or provincial towns.

“Seven students are already missing,” said Ishaq Miruka, head teacher of Fathu Rahman Primary School sited near a noisy air force base in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighborhood.

Although none of the missing students are from Fathu Rahman, Miruka says he was once offered a job at one of the schools from which some children have disappeared.

“We found out that they were hired by a militant group in Somalia. Children, all boys, aged between 14-17 years were transported from Eastleigh to Somalia.”

He said the institutions are financed from abroad and that most Somalis did not have any qualms about enrolling their children in the schools.

“Most of these institutions do not rely on local money. They are financed by Al-Shabab and its agents in Kenya,” he said.

Frightened by the experiences of fellow Somalis whose children have disappeared, Fadumo Mohamed, 34, closes her small Nairobi business three times a day to check on her four children at the school.

“I cannot stay at my shop uninterrupted during working hours. I fear bad people will take my children away,” said Mohamed, who fled to Kenya to escape the near-daily mortar fire and gun battles of the Somali capital Mogadishu.

“Children disappearing from some parts of Nairobi and in Garissa should be a warning for every mother,” she said during a lunch break visit to the school, the day’s second.

Garissa is a town in Kenya’s North Eastern province where Somali Islamists have reportedly also been recruiting.

Fathu Rahman, set up to provide Islamic education integrated into the Kenyan secular syllabus, is seeking to win the hearts and minds of the young Somalis in its care.

Like many parents at Fathu Rahman, Mohamed is anxious militants may still have access to her children’s impressionable minds.

“We monitor our children’s behavior daily so that we can stop them before they become radicalized and persuaded to go back to Somalia and fight for Al-Shabab,” she said.

The call for peaceful Islam is winning over some parents and students. In just over a year, Fathu Rahman has grown from a dozen students to a hundred.

“The only thing we can do is to equip our students with enough Islamic education that will help them identify bad groups, then they will not fall victim to misinterpreted Islam,” said Sheikh Khalif Hussein, chairman of Fathu Rahman.