Canadian killed in Somali clashes

The Toronto Star – June 8, 2011

 

A Somali-born Canadian who reportedly led a faction of the outlawed Al Shabab fighters was killed during clashes according to the country’s government-led radio station. A photo of the young man identified as “Abdirahman Canadian” was posted on the Somali website Radio Mogadishu. An army commander with the country’s transitional federal government told reporters a Canadian passport was later found in his pickup truck.

Government troops shot him along with another man when they failed to stop at a government-controlled checkpoint, the radio station reported.

Al Shabab, a radical group fighting to instill an Islamic government in Somalia and has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, was designated a terrorist organization in Canada last March. At least 10 Canadian men of Somali origins have disappeared from Toronto and Ottawa since 2009, reportedly to join the group. Mohammed Elmi Ibrahim, one of missing men who was from Scarborough and in his early 20’s, was reportedly killed in battle in March 2010. Fear again struck Toronto’s Somali community this year when news spread about two young women who had also fled to Mogadishu to join the Shabab.

 

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