10 held in Somalia over murder of Britons

Ten people were arrested in Somaliland by police hunting the killers of a British headmaster and his wife, according to reports today.

Dick and Enid Eyeington were shot through the window of their flat in the Sheikh Secondary School, 500 miles north of Mogadishu as they sat watching television last Monday night.

The motive for the killing was unclear but it is believed that many of the suspects were security guards at the school where the couple taught.

Mr Eyeington, a 62-year-old grandfather, had rejected the pleas of his family not to move to the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, in the north of the African country.

His brother, John, described him as “do-gooder” who was passionate about teaching and helping people.

“We were very worried when he decided to go to Somalia,” he told PA News last week.

“We knew it was dangerous, and we thought he’d done enough already. But he was determined, and now he’s paid for it with his life.”

Austrian aid agency SOS Children’s Village, who ran the school, said that hostility towards Westerners in the area had risen in recent months, but there had been no previous attacks on staff.

The son of a coal miner, Mr Eyeington grew up in Pelton Fell, County Durham, before going to grammar school and teacher training college.

He married Enid, a fellow teacher, in the early 60s, and the couple had two grown-up children.

The family first moved to Africa in 1962, where Mr Eyeington taught in a school in Kenya.

He later moved to Swaziland where he became headmaster of the United World College, an international school attended by the children of former South African president Nelson Mandela.

Political commentator Matthew Parris and actor Richard E Grant and also attended the school.

SOS Children’s Villages Secretary-General, Richard Pichler, said the couple had planned the job in Somalia to be their last before they retired.

“Their decision to work in Somaliland was a culmination of their life experiences in the education of children and young people,” he said.

The boarding school was established during British colonial rule and was mostly destroyed in fighting launched by former dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1989.

The deaths came just weeks after an award-winning Italian aid worker was killed in Borama, Somaliland.

Annalena Tonelli, 60, was shot on October 5 outside the hospital she founded to treat tuberculosis patients.

Reports on Radio Somaliland said two people were also being questioned in connection with her death.

A Foreign Office spokesman said they had received no official reports about the arrests over the British killings.

Somaliland declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 as civil war raged across much of the southern part of the East African country following the ousting of long-time dictator Mohammed Siad Barre.

Somalia has not had an effective central government for over a decade, and Somalis rely on charities and aid groups for health care and education.

The Foreign Office had issued an advisory there was a “high general threat” of terrorism toward Western, including British, targets in Somalia.