The director of an independent Somali radio station is dead – ambushed and killed by masked gunmen.

Witnesses, and a producer at Shabelle Radio in the capital of Mogadishu, say 29-year-old Hassan Osman Abdi was on his way home from the station late Saturday when he was shot and killed by two pistol-wielding assailants.

A VOA reporter in Mogadishu says Abdi, also known as Hassan Fantastic, was entering his home at the time of the attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility or motive for the attack on Abdi, who was the father of three children.

Abdi had worked at Shabelle Radio for three years.

Attacks on journalists are not uncommon in war-ravaged Somalia.

This past December, a gunman shot and killed a prominent television journalist in Mogadishu. A spokesman for Horn Cable TV said Abdisalam Sheikh Hussein was shot in the head by a man wearing a Somali government uniform.

Somali government and African Union forces are battling the Islamic militant group, al-Shabab, which controls most of central and southern Somalia.

The country has endured 20 years of lawlessness and conflict since the fall of the last stable government.