Four foreigners killed in Somalia

Four foreigners, including two with British passports, were killed when heavily armed Islamic militants seized a central Somali town, witnesses and police said today.

“We have discovered the dead bodies of three foreigners and the... owner of the Hakab Private English School in the town this morning,” said Ayanle Husein Abdi, a resident of Belet Weyne.

Belet Weyne police chief Abdi Aden Adow said two of the dead had British passports and were of Somali origin, and two others were Kenyan.

Resident Abdi-qani Hashi said the fighters arrived late last night, took up strategic positions, freed prisoners and burned the governor’s house before withdrawing.

“The insurgents came into the town peacefully because the government forces retreated to the Somali-Ethiopian border earlier as they received information that the militants were heading the town,” added the police chief.

Insurgents have taken nearly a dozen towns in brief attacks in the past few months, but usually withdraw after a few hours.

In the southern town of Merka, cinema owner Abdi-Alalah said four people were killed and 16 wounded when gunmen threw a grenade into a building where hundreds of young people were watching a Hollywood film.

In the capital, Mogadishu, Burundian peacekeepers escaped injury in an overnight attack on their base, their spokesman, Captain Clement Cimana, said.

Several hours of gunfire could be heard overnight near two police bases in the capital, but no details were available.

Insurgents also ambushed an Ethiopian army convoy as it drove through central Somalia yesterday, sparking a 30-minute gunfight, said a resident of nearby Halgan village who gave his name only as Bashir.

Insurgents have been battling the weak UN-backed government and its Ethiopian allies for control since their combined forces pushed the Islamists from the capital in December 2006.

The Islamists regrouped in Eritrea, Ethiopia’s arch enemy, and vowed to fight an Iraq-style insurgency. Somalia is riven between clans, awash with weapons and has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other.