OTTAWA - Canada has called on the Somali government to protect journalists in the strife-torn country after a Canadian reporter was killed there.
Fifty-year-old Ali Iman Sharmarke, owner of the HornAfrik Media Company and a former resident of Ottawa, was killed by a remote-controlled land mine Saturday.
In a statement, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay strongly condemns the killing and has expressed condolences to Sharmarke's family.
MacKay called the attack a "stark reminder of the difficult environment faced by Somali journalists, who have been subject to attacks and harassment."
He urged Somalia's Government to "hold the perpetrators of these killings to account, and to protect journalists and other media professionals who are exercising their profession."
Sharmarke was killed as he drove home from the burial for another journalist who had been shot in the head.
The past weekend's events bring to six the number of journalists killed in Somalia this year.
There was no immediate indication of who killed the men.
HornAfrik's broadcasts have criticized both the government and the Islamic militants who have been trying to topple the administration through a bloody insurgency.
Sharmarke, who had a comfortable professional career in Ottawa, had fled the brutal civil war in Somalia and settled in Canada where he became a Canadian citizen.
He returned to Somalia in 1999 and founded HornAfrik, which won the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression's 2002 International Press Freedom Award.
