A SWEDISH cameraman was shot dead in the Somali capital of Mogadishu yesterday as he filmed a rally in support of a peace deal designed to end 15 years of bloodshed.

Martin Adler was a regular freelance contributor to Channel 4 who had won several awards for his work in war zones. The assailant disappeared among thousands of people after shooting the journalist through the chest, according to witnesses.

“Out of the blue there was a crack and he went down and it seems as if he was shot at very close quarters,” a Western reporter who was at the demonstration said. “Up until then there had really been no suggestion of any threat.”

Mr Adler was killed in the southern part of the city, where about 4,000 people had gathered to express their support for a tentative peace deal and against any plans for foreign peacekeepers to be deployed. The freelance cameraman had worked for ITN and Channel 4 news over the past ten years, but was not employed by them at the time of his death, ITN said.

Mr Adler’s death is at least the tenth killing of a foreign journalist in Somalia since 1991.

Less than 24 hours earlier the country’s shaky government and its Islamist opposition had signed a ceasefire agreement in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. It follows the rapid rise of the Islamic courts, which control a vast swath of southern Somalia and Mogadishu, which had been off-limits to Western journalists since the killing of Kate Peyton, a BBC producer, in February last year.

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