STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Sweden's foreign minister urged Somalia's authorities to speedily investigate the slaying last week of a Swedish journalist at an Islamist rally in Mogadishu and deplored the violence that has shaken the African nation, according to comments published Monday.
Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson condemned the fatal shooting of veteran cameraman Martin Adler, and said that he has pressed the Somali authorities on the killing.
"What happened was terrible, it has deeply disturbed me," Eliasson was quoted as saying by Sweden's largest newspaper, Aftonbladet.
Adler was shot in the back by an unknown assailant while covering a rally Friday in Mogadishu in support of the Islamic leaders who control the Somali capital and most of the country's south.
The shooter has not been caught, but the Islamic militia said the killing was planned by a foreign enemy that wants to shatter weeks of relative peace since the Islamists took over.
Eliasson said he demanded through Sweden's diplomatic mission in Kenya that Somali authorities make sure the killing is "quickly and effectively investigated."
Eliasson, who is currently president of the U.N. General Assembly, also said that Somalia's President Abdullahi Yusuf phoned him after the killing.
"President Yusuf expressed his condolences and assured me that the authorities will get to the bottom of this," Eliasson said. "My thoughts are with the Adler family."
Attacks against journalists _ who Eliasson said were the "eyes of the international community" _ were "unacceptable and shocking," he said.
Adler's remains were expected to be brought home to Sweden by midweek.
Adler won international awards including the 2001 Amnesty International Media Award, a Silver Prize for investigative journalism at the 2001 New York Film Festival and the 2004 Rory Peck Award for Hard News. He had worked in more than two dozen war zones, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo and Sierra Leone.
Anger at foreigners runs high Mogadishu, which is awash in weapons after years of anarchy. In 1991, warlords drove out dictator Mohammed Siad Barre and turned on each other, turning the country into a patchwork of rival fiefdoms.
Anti-foreigner sentiment has been stoked by reports that the warlords defeated by the Islamic leaders this month had been secretly financed by the CIA.
"Continued violence in Somalia is unacceptable," Eliasson earlier told Swedish public radio, urging fractions in Somalia to lay down their arms.
