Masked gunmen killed seven Pakistani preachers at a mosque in Somalia’s Puntland region yesterday, residents and local officials said.
Western security agencies say Somalia is a haven for insurgents plotting attacks in the region and beyond. Puntland is a base for pirates targeting the Gulf of Aden, but has been more peaceful than the south of Somalia.
Residents said the attack took place after early morning prayers at the mosque in Galkayo in the semi-autonomous region, and was aimed at a group of 25 sheikhs who arrived on Tuesday.
“Six Pakistanis died on the spot while another Pakistani died from his injuries in the hospital. These men are Islamist preachers from Karachi, Pakistan,” Hussein Abdullahi, chairman of Galkayo, said by telephone. “Puntland forces have now surrounded the area around the mosque to protect the other sheikhs.” he said.
Somalia has been torn by civil war since 1991, and the government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed controls only small pockets of the capital Mogadishu.
It is battling hardline Islamist rebels in southern and central regions, including the al-Shabaab group, which the US accuses of being al-Qaeda’s proxy in Somalia.
Puntland’s information minister was killed in the same area last week, and residents said yesterday’s attack may have been motivated by suspicions the preachers were linked to al-Qaeda.
Resident Sheikh Abdiqadir Ali said masked gunmen opened fire in the mosque immediately after prayers. A village elder said the bodies were removed from the scene by the security forces.
Abdullahi Said Samatar, Puntland’s security minister, said the dead were preachers who traveled the world to spread Islam.
“We were very shocked to hear seven Pakistanis were killed in our region,” he said.
Meanwhile, four aid workers from a French charity and two Kenyan pilots were freed on Tuesday after being held hostage for nine months, officials said.
The two French women, a Belgian and a Bulgarian working for Action Contre La Faim (ACF — Action Against Hunger) boarded a plane and were flown out of Somalia, a spokeswoman for ACF said.
“Apparently all are in good health, they’ll have a medical check-up,” said the relief organization in a statement.
Somali gunmen seized the four aid workers on Nov. 5 last year, along with two pilots who were accompanying them to an area bordering Ethiopia.
The gunmen snatched them as they were trying to leave the airstrip in Dhusa Mareb, an Islamist stronghold in central Somalia, to fly to Nairobi.
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense