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    January 28, 2012

Gunmen Ambush, Kill Somali Journalist

   VOA News
   Photo: AP
   In this photo taken in 2010, the director of Shabelle radio station
   Hassan Osman Abdi, right, presents a program in the radio station's
   studio in Mogadishu, Somalia. Unidentified gunmen shot and killed Abdi,
   a 29-year-old father of three, on his way home in the chaotic capital
   Mogadishu on Saturday, Jan. 28, 2012.

   The director of an independent Somali radio station is dead, ambushed
   and killed by masked gunmen.
   Witnesses and a producer at Shabelle Radio in the capital of Mogadishu
   say 29-year-old Hassan Osman Abdi was on his way home from the station
   late Saturday when he was shot and killed by pistol-wielding
   assailants.
   VOA reporter in Mogadishu Hassan Kaafi Qosyte says Abdi, also known as
   Hassan Fantastic, was entering his home at the time of the attack.
   A statement from the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ)
   condemned the attack and said Abdi had been followed home by five men
   in a sedan, who shot him five times. It said Abdi died from head and
   chest injuries as he was being taken to the hospital.
   There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
   Abdi, a father of three, had worked at Shabelle Radio for three years.
   NUSOJ cited colleagues as saying they believed his killing was related
   to his role in reporting on the political crisis in Somalia and on
   corruption.

   Attacks on journalists are not uncommon in war-ravaged Somalia.
   This past December, a gunman shot and killed a prominent television
   journalist in Mogadishu. A spokesman for Horn Cable TV said Abdisalam
   Sheikh Hussein was shot in the head by a man wearing a Somali
   government uniform.
   Somali government and African Union forces are battling the Islamic
   militant group, al-Shabab, which controls most of central and southern
   Somalia.
   The country has endured 20 years of lawlessness and conflict since the
   fall of the last stable government.

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