BBC producer shot dead in Somalia

LONDON - A BBC producer was shot and killed in Somalia on Wednesday shortly after she arrived to report on the lawless state, the British broadcaster said.

The BBC said Kate Peyton, 39, was believed to have been shot outside the Sahafi Hotel in the capital Mogadishu.

Witnesses said a gunman approached her at the hotel's gate, fired one bullet at her with a pistol and then sped off in a car with other passengers. The car was later found abandoned in another part of town.

Peyton underwent surgery for a bullet wound and it was later reported she died of internal bleeding, the broadcaster said in a statement. Earlier doctors had said she was stable after losing a lot of blood.

"Kate was one of our most experienced and respected Foreign Affairs producers who had worked all over Africa and all over the world," BBC Director of News Helen Boaden said in a statement. "She will be greatly missed, both professionally and personally."

A spokesman for President Abdillahi Yusuf said the transitional government was saddened by the killing and sent condolences to her family and to the BBC.

Peyton spent the past 10 years in Africa and is based in Johannesburg. She worked for the BBC as a producer and reporter since 1993.

The broadcaster said she had just arrived in Somalia with reporter Peter Greste to make a series of reports on the country, which has been ravaged by war since the overthrow of military rule Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991.

At least eight foreign journalists have been killed covering Somalia since then.

The worst single day was on July 12, 1993, when a Reuters cameraman, two Reuters photographers and an Associated Press photographer were killed by a mob outside a house which had been fired on by US helicopter gunships.

The Somali government, based in the relative safety of neighbouring Kenya, announced on Wednesday that it planned to go home on Feb 21.

The government, which was set up last year, aims to end fighting between the militias that have run Somalia since 1991.

Analysts said the killing highlighted the rising insecurity in the lawless Horn of Africa country after the establishment of the new government and growing opposition to regional plans to send foreign troops to Mogadishu to help keep the peace.

Greste was not hurt in Wednesday's shooting.

- REUTERS