Gunmen kill Pakistani preachers in Somali Puntland
August 12, 2009 (ADDIS ABABA) — Seven Muslim Pakistani preachers were killed today in Somalia’s self-declared state of Puntland by unknown gunmen on Wednesday morning.
The Pakistani clerics belong to the Islamic missionary movement Tablighi Jamaat who are known to be apolitical and nonviolent. They are seen as non party in the current conflict between the moderate and the extremist Somali factions.
A group of masked gunmen stormed a mosque in western Somalia town of Galkayo at dawn and dragged the preachers out of the mosque before to open fire on them, the local police said.
Six were killed immediately and the seventh died later in the hospital.
Puntland’s president Abdurahman Mohamed Farole condemned the killing as a “terrible incident. We are still investigating who was behind it,” he told reporters after the incident.
The police are looking for the killers, he added.
However it was unclear why the Pakistani preachers, who arrived in Galkayo on Tuesday, were targeted.
Although Puntland has been spared much of the violence which has wracked other regions of the Horn of Africa state in the past 18 years, tensions have been on the rise lately.
Last week, Puntland’s information minister was killed by unknown attackers in Galkayo. The region is also a major hub for the piracy that has turned the Gulf of Aden into the world’s most dangerous waterway.
Puntland, which declared its semi-autonomous status in 1998, has also seen the abduction of journalists and other foreigners, later freed upon payment of ransom.
Local residents said Wednesday’s attack may have been driven by suspicion that the sheikhs were linked to al Qaeda.
A spokesman for Al Shebab condemned the killing from Mogadishu saying that the group was saddened by the killing of the religious scholars.
“They were preachers who spread Islam,” said Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage. “We shall get our revenge and get our hands on those who killed them. Let the Tablighi (preachers) also take up guns and fight the enemies,” he e added.
(ST)