A radical Islamic group notorious for its cold-blooded cruelty has beheaded two Christian women in a village in southeastern Somalia, forcing the townspeople — and the daughters of one of the women — to witness the murders.
Morning Star News, which monitors the persecuted church around the world, reported that on March 4 members of the Al-Shabaab militia herded residents of the port village of Barawa into the center of the town to witness the executions of the 41-year-old mother, Sadia Ali Omar, and her 35-year-old cousin, Osman Mohamoud Moge, according to sources cited by Morning Star. Before the murders one thug reportedly announced: “We know these two people are Christians who recently came back from Kenya. We want to wipe out any underground Christian living inside of mujahidin area.”
Somalis who have spent time in Kenya, which is predominantly Christian, have been especially targeted by the gang of terrorists. Residents of Barawa said that the two murdered women had been in Kenya until early in 2013.
Morning Star reported that the eight- and fifteen-year-old daughters of Omar “were witness to the slaughter, sources said, with the younger girl screaming and shouting for someone to save her mother. A friend helped the girls, whose names are withheld, to relocate to another area.” A resident reportedly said that townspeople were “afraid that the Al-Shabaab might continue monitoring these two children and eventually kill them just like their mother.
The Islamic Al-Shabaab killers, who had vowed to exterminate Christians from the region, had monitored the two women because they had not regularly attended Friday prayers at the local mosque. “The two people who were killed … did not take Friday prayers seriously, especially Omar, who claimed that she was praying in her house,” one resident was quoted by Morning Star as saying.
Islamic extremism tied to Al-Shabaab has been responsible for many deaths in Somalia in the past several months. Morning Star reported that gunmen killed a Christian man in Mogadishu in October of last year for the crime of sharing his faith. Two men armed with pistols “shot Abdikhani Hassan seven times as he approached his home after closing his pharmacy in Dharkenley District,” reported the Christian news site. “Hassan was survived by a wife who was pregnant and five children ranging in age from 3 to 12.”
Similarly, Al-Shabaab is linked to the murder of Fartun Omar, a Christian, in April 2013, months after they had killed her husband. In June 2013 members of the murderous group killed 28-year-old Hassan Hurshe, dragging him to the center of a town in southern Somalia and shooting him in the head.
Religion Today reported that the Al-Shabaab killers have murdered dozens of Christian converts from Islam since embarking on their campaign to rid Somalia of the faith. “The extremists, variously estimated at 3,000 to 7,000, seek to impose a stricter version of sharia [Islamic law] on Somalia,” reported the religion news source.
The Al-Shabaab group is most notorious for its September 21, 2013 attack on the upscale Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at least 67 people in the process.
