4 Teachers Are Killed In Raid By Islamists On Somali School

NAIROBI, Kenya — Daud Hassan Ali had an unusual dream for his native Somalia. He was a nomad’s son who lived in Britain for years, but he recently returned to his troubled homeland to teach English. Early Monday, he paid for it with his life.

Witnesses said that Mr. Daud and three foreign teachers, a Briton and two Kenyans, were killed by Islamist insurgents during a midnight raid on one of the few English-language schools in south-central Somalia.

A spokesman for the Shabab militant Islamist group said the teachers were killed by accident after they were caught in cross-fire. But several residents of Beledweyne, the town where the attack happened, said Mr. Daud and the other teachers might have been singled out because they were suspected of preaching Christianity.

Another attack occurred about 200 miles away in Merka, where insurgents tossed a grenade into a crowded movie theater and killed four people on Sunday night, apparently in an attempt to shut it down.

Mr. Daud, who friends said was about 70 years old, was born in Beledweyne, the son of poor nomads. When he was a teenager and Somalia was still an Italian colony, he won a scholarship from a Mennonite organization to study in Britain. He spent 20 years teaching psychology in Birmingham, friends said.

In 2005, he decided to brave Somalia’s considerable dangers and return home to open a school. The school, called the Hiran Community Education Project, has seven classrooms, several toilets and a playground.

Late Sunday night, several truckloads of Islamist fighters, who have been waging an insurgency against Somalia’s weak transitional government, stormed into Beledweyne. Islamist fighters have overrun government troops in several towns over the past few weeks, and their attacks seem to be getting more frequent and more lethal.

Sheik Muktar Robow Abu Monsur, an Islamist spokesman, said that when Islamist fighters reached Mr. Daud’s school, they were fired upon by guards. When the Islamists returned fire, Sheik Muktar said, the teachers were killed.

“It is a gloomy and sorrowful condition for what has happened,” Mohammed Odowaa Maalin, a resident, said Monday. “I am also worried if the other foreign aid workers leave, many people will starve, because the food prices and dollar rate is going up day after day.”

Abdulkadir Ahmed Hussein, 20, is a student at Mr. Daud’s school. He said Mr. Daud was not pushing Christianity but simply teaching English.

“I am worried about the continuance of my education,” he said. “In fact, it is shocking.”

Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Nairobi, Kenya and Mohammed Ibrahim from Mogadishu, Somalia.

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