Heavily armed militants seized a central Somali town, killing two Kenyan and two British teachers, witnesses and police said Monday. The fighters denied the killings. The bodies of the four teachers at the Hakab Private English School were discovered Monday morning, said Ayanle Husein Abdi, a resident of the town of Belet Weyne. Belet Weyne police chief Abdi Aden Adow said two of the victims, a 32-year-old woman and a 70-year-old man, had British passports and were of Somali origin. The other two were Kenyan, he said. “(My uncle) came to the region to help its people learn something and now he is dead for no reason,” said Abdul-Qadir Anshur Ali, the nephew of the slain British man and a teacher at the same school. His uncle was married to a British woman and had two sons in Birmingham, England, he said. A guard at the school, Mohamed Adde, said the four teachers had been shot in the head. Resident Abdi-Qani Hashi said the fighters arrived late Sunday, took up strategic positions, freed prisoners and burned the governor's house before withdrawing. Adow, the police chief, said security forces fled when they heard the insurgents were coming. A spokesman for Al-Shabab Movement, whose fighters seized Belet Weyne Sunday night, said, “We heard that the foreigners were killed but we do not claim responsibility.” Al-Shabab, which means “the youth,” is the armed wing of the Council of Islamic Courts movement. The US State Department considers Al-Shabab a terrorist organization. Its fighters have taken nearly a dozen towns in brief attacks in the past few months, but usually withdraw after a few hours. In the southern town of Merka, an attack on a cinema killed five people and wounded 16 Sunday night, said the owner of the cinema, Abdi-Alalah. Attackers threw a grenade into the building, where hundreds of young people were watching a Hollywood movie. __
