Somali insurgents target radio stations

Insurgents in Somalia's capital Mogadishu beat guards and looted equipment from one radio station and seized control of another on Saturday in the latest attacks on media in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation.

Somalia is one of the most dangerous places for journalists in the world. It was second behind Iraq in the Committee to Protect Journalist's impunity index this year -- a ranking of nations where reporters are killed on a recurring basis and the perpetrators rarely prosecuted.

Somali radio stations in particular have been targeted by two groups of Islamist insurgents fighting to topple the Western-backed administration, while government troops have also been accused of harassing reporters during the conflict.

Employees of the independent radio station HornAfrik in Mogadishu said gunmen from the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebel group raided the broadcaster late on Saturday.

"The guards were blindfolded and beaten by the gunmen and they then proceeded to the all rooms and took away the equipment," a HornAfrik reporter told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Gunmen from another insurgent group, Hizbul Islam, seized control of the GBC radio station also on Saturday, and reporters at some other broadcasters said they had been warned they would soon be taken over by one of the rebel groups.

"Armed Hizbul Islam fighters came to our radio station. They did not take equipment but took control of the station," Mohamed Ibrahim, a producer at GBC said. "They are still here and in control of the radio."

In April this year, al Shabaab said it had taken the British Broadcasting Corporation off the air in regions it controlled, saying the BBC spread Christian propaganda.

Al Shabaab, which was behind bombings in Uganda's capital in July and wants to impose its own harsh version of sharia law throughout Somalia, has also banned music from radio stations and only allows Arabic Koranic chanting.

In May, a prominent journalist working for the state-run Radio Mogadishu was shot dead by al Shabaab gunmen while on his way home.

Somalia has been without effective central government since 1991 when a dictator was ousted. Since rebels launched an insurgency at the start of 2007, more than 21,000 civilians have been killed in fighting throughout the country.

Al Shabaab now controls much of southern and central Somalia and the Western-backed administration is hemmed into a small section of the capital and propped up by 7,200 African Union soldiers.