BBC - A journalist in the breakaway republic of Somaliland has been killed by gunmen as he returned home from work.
Ahmed Farah Ilyas was a reporter in Las Anod, the main city of the volatile Sool region, for UK-based Somali station Universal TV.
Before he was shot, he had been covering the story of a land mine explosion blamed by the authorities on al-Qaeda-aligned Islamist militants.
Ilyas is the 16th journalist to be killed in Somalia this year.
Since the overthrow of President Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia has seen clan-based warlords, Islamist militants and its neighbours all battling for control of the country.
Somaliland declared independence in the wake of Mr Barre's ousting - and has been a a far more peaceful part of Somali territory, although Sool is in an area also claimed by the autonomous Somali state of Puntland and has experienced some unrest.
The BBC's Hagar Jibril in nearby Burao says witnesses told him that Ilyas was shot by two gunmen on Tuesday evening about 10m from his house.
Earlier on Tuesday, four people were wounded by a landmine which Sool governor Mahamed Mahamud Ali said was laid by al-Shabab militants.
Our reporter says a trial of suspected al-Shabab militants also opened in Las Anod on Tuesday.
"We condemn the killing of Ahmed Farah Ilyas. Journalists are being targeted for their work, and they are performing their duties under the most trying times," Omar Faruk Osman, from the National Union of Somali Journalists, said in a statement.
Earlier this year, a UN report noted that al-Shabab was expanding operations further north, and last week a large consignment of arms destined for suspected Islamist militants was seized in Puntland.
Al-Shabab has been under pressure from African Union peacekeepers and Somali government army in central and southern Somalia.
It has lost some of the major towns it once controlled over the last few months but still control large areas of land, especially in rural areas.
There has been progress on the political front with the election by MPs last month in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, of a new president.
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Mohamed Aldayr Mohamed said : in your news article title u wrote somaliland issue in the middle of your article u put somaliland under somalia when you are saying this the number .... killed in somalia ,please next time take the statistics from somaliland and if you dono try to contact the journalist who knows it ,sorrry i don mean to dis-repect its correction and if it happen again i am suggesting all the somalilanders in this page to dis-like it thanka u
ReplyDeleteLet us face the fact that Somaliland is trying to tear itself away from Somalia and that the World still sees Somaliland as part of Somalia . The reason that Somaliland government is talking to Somalia is to convince the World that Somaliland has seceded from Somalia because of the doomed union in 1960 which lead to the abuse of the people from the north by those in powerof the consecutive corrupt governments based in southern Somalia . We should not be too sensitive if events in Somaliland are reported combined with those in Somalia despite the suffering of our people . We know that there is a problem in Sool and some of its inhabitants consider themselves as part of Somalia . We need to show tolerance here . Until Somaliland is recognized , it will always be considered as part of Somalia , so it would better for us to put our utmost efforts in attaining the recognition of Somaliland rather than picking on petty issues like the subject of the above comment .
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