One of Somalia’s most senior religious preachers has been in killed in Puntland.Sheikh Abdulkadir Nur Farah, who is also known as Sheikh Abdulkadir Ga’amey, was Friday gunned down inside a mosque in Garowe town, the capital of the semiautonomous state of Puntland.Garowe is some 1,000 km north of the Somali capital of Mogadishu.Witnesses said Sheikh Farah was in the middle of afternoon prayers at Beder Mosque when he was attacked by a young man wielding a pistol.He was shot several times and died while being transferred to a hospital.Puntland President Abdurahman Mohamed Farole, confirmed the Sheikh’s death and said that an outraged crowd had captured the gunman.“He was a great sheikh who preached the true Islamic faith,” President Farole said.“His only crime was that he was very critical of the methods of Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda,” he said, adding that the cleric would get a state funeral.The President named the arrested suspect as Abdurahman Hussein Jama Bile.Puntland security officials confirmed that a suspect had been detained and investigations were underway.Agencies
