Nairobi/Mogadishu - The head of one of Somalia's most popular radio stations, HornAfrik, was fatally shot by three masked gunmen in the capital, Mogadishu, Shabelle Radio reported.

Said Tahlil Ahmed was killed Wednesday as he and other journalists were walking to a press conference called by Somalia's main insurgent group, al-Shabaab.

The director of Shabelle Radio, Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe, was also injured in the attack.

Tahlil was appointed director of HornAfrik after its founder, Ali Sharmarke, was killed in a roadside bombing in Mogadishu in August
2007.

Eleven journalists have been murdered in Somalia since 2007, four of whom worked for HornAfrik.

Nairobi/Mogadishu - The deputy mayor of Somali capital Mogadishu has accused African Union peacekeepers of opening fire on commuter buses, killing more than 20 civilians.

Abdifatah Shaweye said the peacekeepers opened fire indiscriminately on Monday after they were targeted by a roadside bomb.

"I saw more than 20 dead bodies, all of them civilians who were riding on four passenger buses at the time of the explosion," Radio Garowe reported Shaweye as saying.

Washington/Nairobi  - The United States Saturday congratulated moderate Islamist Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on his election as Somalia's new president and urged him to reach out to other Somalis "who reject violence" in forming a new government.

In a statement issued by the US embassy in Nairobi and released in Washington, the United States noted that Sheikh Sharif was a strong proponent of international mediation and "has worked diligently on reconciliation efforts in Somalia."

Nairobi  - The moderate Islamist and opposition leader Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed was elected Somalia's president early Saturday in a parliamentary vote held in neighbouring Djibouti.

Of the 420 votes cast, 293 went to Sharif, the Somali news agency Shabelle reported.

The vote took place in the same week that legislators decided to nearly double the size of parliament to include Sharif's opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) and at a time when their nation is under siege from Islamist insurgents.

Nairobi- Pirates on Thursday hijacked a German-owned tanker carrying liquified petroleum gas off the coast of Somalia, a maritime official said.

"The German-owned LPG tanker MV Longchamp was seized on Thursday morning," Andrew Mwangura, of the Kenya-based East African Seafarers' Assistance Programme, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "She was sailing from Europe to the Far East."

The ship, which has a capacity of 3,415 tonnes, was fully loaded when it was taken, Mwangura said.