MOGADISHU, Aug 11: Two senior Somali radio journalists were killed on Saturday Mogadishu, hours after four officials were shot dead. The motives for the killing of the heads of Horn Afrik and its affiliate Radio Capital Voice remained unclear and no arrests had been made, but a media rights body suggested they had been deliberately targeted.

Ali Iman Sharmarke, the head of the local private media group Horn Afrik, which has two radio stations and a television channel, and Mahad Ahmed Elmi, the director of one of the radio stations, were killed in separate incidents.

Mr Sharmake, who had dual Somali and Canadian nationality, was targeted by a roadside bomb as he was returning in his car from Elmi’s funeral.

Elmi had been shot dead by two gunmen on his way to work, colleagues said. “It’s terrible news... He was shot several times and he died instantly,” Hasan Kafi Qoyste, one of his colleagues at the radio station, told AFP.

Mr Sharmake’s deputy, Said Tahlil, said his boss died after being hit in the head by shrapnel. Another journalist who was with him in his car was wounded.

Mohamed Muhidin Ali, a spokesman for the Mogadishu administration, spoke of a ‘tragedy’. “Those who killed them will not be pardoned, I’m sure they will be brought to justice one day,” he said.

Simba Radio director Abdulahi Ali Farah said Mogadishu’s nearly 10 radio stations had stopped airing programmes till Sunday for mourning.

The Reporters sans Frontieres said in a statement: “The transitional government must take urgent steps to protect journalists and thoroughly investigate and punish these murders to prevent further killings.”

On Friday night, four officials were attacked in the Suqbaad district in northern Mogadishu.

Local resident, Muktar Mohamed, said the four were walking along when two men opened fire. Three died on the spot and the fourth in hospital.

The four victims had recently been appointed by the Somali government to the local administration of the village of El Baraf, police officer Nur Adan Madey said.—AFP