Hiiraan Online
By Shafi’i Mohyaddin
Monday, March 24, 2014
Mogadishu (HOL) - At least eight elderly men have been killed by unidentified gunmen outside the town of Bur-Hakaba in the Bay region late on Sunday. Somali government officials and residents confirmed.
The elders who helped the formation of the controversial South-western Somali state based in the city of Baidoa were on their way to Lower Shabele region. When assailants snatched them from the car they were travelling in and shot them dead about 7 kilometres from the town of Bur-Hakaba on Sunday afternoon.
Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Sheikh Ahmed condemned the murder of the elders and blamed Al Shabaab for the massacre.
The commissioner of Bur-Hakaba town Ali Hassan told HOL that the elders were snatched from their car in the outskirts of the Jamee’ada village near Bur-Hakaba and hours after their bodies were found in the same area.
The regional police chief Colonel Mahad Abdirahman Aden accused the Al-Qaeda-linked militants of Al Shabab carrying out such brutal massacre against the elders.
But the militants who promptly reacted the accusation denied any involvement in the assassination.
The mystery still remains over who was behind this brutal assassination of the elderly men who were returning from Baidoa after spending 15 months there to help the formation of the controversial regional state which composes of six regions.
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