KISMAYU, Somalia, (Reuters) – Suspected Islamist insurgents shot dead a local journalist working for the BBC in southern Somalia on Saturday, witnesses said.

A Reuters witness said gunmen confronted Nasteh Dahir outside his home in the port of Kismayu before shooting him in the chest and stomach. He died soon afterwards in hospital.

The BBC in neighbouring Kenya confirmed his identity.

Sobbing over the corpse, Dahir’s wife Idil Abdi Ahmed said she had no idea who would want her husband dead. “He had no problem or argument with anyone in town. We don’t know why he was killed, he was innocent,” she told Reuters.

Mired in conflict since the 1991 fall of a dictator, Somalia is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists.

Local reporters have frequently been targeted by Islamist rebels who are waging an Iraq-style insurgency against the fragile interim government and its Ethiopian military allies.