Somali militants kill two Britons

Somali Islamist militants killed two Somalis holding British passports and two Kenyans at a school in the central town of Baladwayne overnight, local residents said toay.

"Al Shaabab fighters entered the town and suddenly attacked houses of government officials," resident Ahmed Elmi told Reuters. "Then they attacked a school where they killed two Kenyans, a British woman and a Somali man with a British passport."

Al Shabaab is a militant Islamist group that the United States put on its list of foreign terrorist organisations in late February, for what Washington says is links to al Qaeda.

It is leading an insurgency against the Somali interim government and its Ethiopian military allies in the capital Mogadishu, in which at least 6,500 have been killed in the last year.

Another Baladwayne resident, Nur Muse, said that the militants had left the town.

"Local people are terrified because people who were involved in educating our people were killed last night," he said. The British man, who is ethnically Somali, had come back to his home to build a school, Muse said.