A Swedish journalist was shot and killed on Friday in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, while attending a demonstration organised by Islamic courts, witnesses said.
Unknown gunmen shot the journalist at a rally site in the southern part of the city where about 4 000 Islamists were demonstrating in support of the courts, they said.
”He was shot and killed while attending the rally,” said Mohamed Amin, a Somali journalist who was at the scene.
”He died on the spot,” Amin told Agence France-Presse.
Details of the incident were sketchy. One witness said the journalist had apparently been the victim of a sniper but another said the man had been shot at close range with a handgun.
A speaker at the rally condemned the killing and pledged that the gunman or gunmen would be punished.
”He is not one of us,” the speaker, a cleric, told the crowd. ”We are against the killing of a journalist who is a guest.
”This person deserves to be punished for killing somebody for no reason,” the speaker said. ”With the help of Allah we will find him and punish him accordingly.”
The journalist, whose body was taken Bamadir Hospital, was believed to have arrived in Mogadishu from Copenhagen about a week ago, according to witnesses and staff at the Shamo Hotel where he was staying.
Some witnesses said the shooting may have been linked the publication by a Danish newspaper last year of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that enraged many in the Muslim world, including Somalia.
Mogadishu has been under the control of militia loyal to the city’s Islamic courts since June 5 when they seized most of the capital, ousting a United States-backed warlord alliance.
The situation there has been tense, with anti-US sentiment running high. Demonstrators at Friday’s rally burned the flags of the US and Ethiopia, which the courts have accused of sending troops to back the warlords.
The killing is the first of a foreign journalist in the city since the shooting death last year of BBC producer Kate Peyton, who was slain outside a hotel in Mogadishu on February 9 2005. — AFP
