Journalists' group condemns killing of radio reporter

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the killing, on Sunday, of a radio journalist who was covering a protest by bus and truck drivers near the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

"We mourn the loss of our colleague Duniya Muhyadin," Ann Cooper, the CPJ executive director, said on Monday from New York. "Somalia must find a way to end the climate of impunity and violence responsible for this tragic crime."

A militiaman manning a checkpoint on the Mogadishu-Afgoye Road, 30 km from the capital, shot dead Duniya Muhaydin Nur, 26, on Sunday as she covered the protest for her radio station, HornAfrik, which is based in Mogadishu.

Duniya "was killed by a single bullet fired at the back of her taxi. She died instantly," Ali Iman, a director of HornAfrik, told IRIN on Tuesday.

She had gone to cover the drivers, who were protesting the proliferation of militia roadblocks between Mogadishu and Afgoye.

"Duniya was a very promising young journalist," Ali said. "She was well-known and very popular in the city."

She hosted "a very popular" call-in radio programme titled "Mogadishu Today", covering issues affecting minorities, women and children, he added.

"She was very passionate about the difficulties faced by these vulnerable groups," Ali said.

Somalia has had no effective central government since the collapse of the late President Siad Barre's administration in 1991. Since then, faction leaders have carved the country into rival fiefdoms, many of which are wracked by violence.

An interim government was set up in neighbouring Kenya in October 2004 following peace talks, sponsored by the regional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, between Somalia's various clans and factions.

In February, a producer with the British Broadcasting Corporation, Kate Peyton, was shot dead outside her hotel in Mogadishu.

In May, another HornAfrik journalist, Abdallah Nurdin Ahmad, was shot and wounded, also in Mogadishu, when an unidentified gunman shot him three times.