Somalia - RFI

Mogadishu correspondent survives shooting

Article published on the 2009-11-19 Latest update 2009-11-19 18:22 TU

"Now I'm very fine," says RFI's Mogadishu correspondent Abdurahman Warsameh after receiving treatment for a bullet wound to his arm, "I'm very well now, I'm very stable". On Wednesday morning Warsameh was caught up in a firefight in the Somali capital Mogadishu.

He was waiting for a friend outside a city hospital, "then there were skirmishes that broke out between Somali government forces and fighters and we ran for cover".

"There was bullets around and we were under a tree and behind a wall, he said, on the line from the Somali capital. "Suddenly I felt I was hit by something in the arm. People around me tried to put pressure on the injury".

"Then I was rushed to the hospital where I received my treatment".

Warsameh was not wearing any protective equipment such as a flak jacket or helmet, "because it's not available in Mogadishu and in Somalia and it's very expensive".

"So we normally work in our normal shirts and we move around while the fighting, and all journalists are working that way".

He believes he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was not the victim of a targeted shooting. Nonetheless, he still feels lucky.

"I was a bit unlucky at the time and received that injury, but it could have been worse and now I'm very thankful that it was a very slight injury compared to what usually happens to people here."

Warsameh says, journalists are targeted in Somalia because of their profession. "Whenever a journalist is killed here, there is not any group which claims that it has targeted the journalist".

He was not wearing anything that could have identified him as a journalist.

"The difficulty for journalists is that they have to operate in Somalia and report what's taking place," he says, "there are people who are targeting them, who think that what they're doing is not in their interest".

"I am one of the lucky ones though I'm still in Mogadishu, operating in Mogadishu in very difficult circumstances. Really I am",