Somalia: 3 Gunned Down for Refusing to Turn Off Music

Garowe

Three young men were shot and killed in southern Somalia Monday evening after gunmen opened fire at a local bistro, a local elder and a government official said.

The deadly shooting took place in the town of Dhobley, in lawless Lower Jubba region near the Somali-Kenya border, according to clan elder Ahmed Nur Dalab.

"They [gunmen] ordered the music off and demanded a halt to khat trade," elder Dalab told reporters today.

Five other civilians at the bistro were wounded in the attack.

Mr. Dalab, who is chairman of the Dhobley clan council, said the group of heavily-armed fighters arrived in the town two days earlier.

Dhobley Mayor Sheikh Ali Dheere told a Somali radio station later Tuesday that the killers escaped and that security forces were in pursuit.

But a local source in Dhobley told Garowe Online that there is little government presence in the town where militias roam freely, including Islamist-linked fighters.

Lower Jubba region has been mired in anarchy for most of 2007, with various clan groups vying for control of the region's capital and economic hub, Kismayo.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf has said that Kismayo is not under the control of the Ethiopian-backed interim government.

Earlier this month, Islamic Courts officer Mohamed-Amin said that Islamist officials were holding private consultations in Dhobley, a claim that raised alarm in Kismayo.

Since 2004, Yusuf's interim government has struggled to assert its authority across Somalia in the face of a relentless insurgency in Mogadishu and other parts of the country.

The Islamic Courts movement ruled much of south-central Somalia during the second half of 2006, when they were credited for dismantling clan warlords and restoring order.

But the Ethiopian invasion of December 2006 ousted the Islamists from Mogadishu, ushering in a new era of shootouts, roadside bombings and assassinations.

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