Somali Islamist militia shot dead two people demanding to watch the World Cup semi-final, witnesses said on Wednesday, in the latest sign of a hard-line religious edge to the newly powerful movement. Four others were wounded in the fracas outside a cinema.
The Islamists, who kicked US-backed warlords out of Mogadishu then took control of a large swathe of southern Somalia last month, initially sought to project a moderate image but have been increasingly showing a more radical side.
Tuesday night's shooting came when militiamen in the central town of Dusa Mareb - the home area of the Islamists' hard-line leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys - shut a cinema showing the Germany-Italy semi-final, inhabitants told Reuters.
"They stood in front of the cinema and told the cinema to shut down quickly," resident Muhubo Warsame said by phone.
When the mainly young audience began a demonstration outside, the gunmen first shot into the air, but their bullets also killed two and wounded four others, the witnesses said. The fatalities were the cinema owner and a young girl. "Islam does not accept killing an innocent person without reason," Elmi Abdullahi, a local elder, told Reuters.
There have been numerous other reports of militia from the Islamic Shariah courts - out of which the movement grew - stopping viewings of the World Cup, provoking public protests. Islamist leaders say that is not their policy, but rather the work of over-zealous militiamen.