Peacekeepers in Somalia Fire on Car, Leaving a Journalist Dead

African Union peacekeepers shot and killed a Malaysian journalist covering the famine in Somalia, while a new burst of violence erupted in the central part of the country, Somali officials said Saturday.

Witnesses said African Union peacekeepers opened fire on a car carrying journalists on Friday afternoon as it passed near the crowded K-4 junction in central Mogadishu. A Malaysian cameraman, Noramfaizul Mohd Nor, 39, died after being shot in the chest, and another journalist was wounded. According to a report by the Malaysian National News Agency, both journalists were on a humanitarian mission and were escorted by Somali armed forces.

It was not immediately known why the peacekeepers fired on the car, and the African Union said Saturday that the shooting was under investigation.

“The facts are very unclear at the moment,” said Maj. Gen. Fred Mugisha, the force commander. “I have spoken personally to the Somali president about the situation and offered my sincere reassurance that a full investigation is under way and that the appropriate action will be taken against any soldiers found to have acted improperly.”

Mogadishu, Somalia’s bullet-pocked capital, is awash with loosely organized militias and thousands of undisciplined troops, and there have been several cases of peacekeepers and government soldiers accidentally killing civilians. Also, the peacekeepers and government forces sometimes fire in the air to clear jammed intersections, because there are no working traffic lights in Mogadishu or just about anywhere in Somalia.

“The African Union truck came after the car and started firing,” said a woman who saw the attack and who provided only her first name, Halima.

Meanwhile, fighting has erupted in Galkaiyo, a town in central Somalia that is divided between the Puntland semiautonomous government and a separate, clan-based administration. Puntland officials said they were fighting Islamist militants who had killed one of their top commanders. But officials with the Galmudug state government, which is a small clan-based administration based in Galkaiyo, said the fighting was a clan dispute.

The fighting in Galkaiyo has killed more than 20 people and wounded dozens, threatening to complicate an already tricky political conference that begins on Sunday. The United Nations has invited several dozen Somali politicians, including cabinet members of the Transitional Federal Government and leaders from Puntland and Galmudug, to Mogadishu to devise a “roadmap” to prepare for the end of the transitional government, whose mandate expires next year. The politicians, many of whom have been accused of pilfering millions of dollars, are expected to carry out an ambitious program of reforms, including the writing of a new constitution.

Few analysts believe the transitional government has the will or the skills to pacify Somalia, which has been mired in varying degrees of chaos since the central government collapsed in 1991. Much of the southern third of the country is still controlled by the Shabab, who have blocked desperately needed food aid from reaching many famine-stricken areas.

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