The FINANCIAL — Somali militants killed two soccer fans whom they caught watching a 2010 FIFA World Cup game, the International Sports Press Association (AIPS) said on its website, according to RIA Novosti.
In 2006 the Islamic Courts Union which controlled most of Somalia prohibited the World Cup and other soccer competitions on the grounds that it was a "satanic act."
The incident took place late on June 12 in a village near the Somali capital Mogadishu. A group of heavily armed militants of the Hezbal Islam radical group attacked a house where a group of soccer fans secretly followed the tense Argentina-Nigeria game.
"Two young men who tried to jump over the wall were shot and killed while ten others including my husband and my teenage son were taken into Islamist custody in the village," Halima Ahmed, a mother of five children told AIPS in a phone conversation.
A Hezbal Islam leader, Sheik Mohamed Abu Abdalla, said the men violated the Islamic law and those caught by militants will be tried in an Islamic court.
"Football descended from the old Christian cultures and our Islamic administration will never allow watching what they call the FIFA World Cup. We are sending our last warning to the people," he said.
President of the Somali Football Federation, Said Mahmoud Nur, declined to comment on the report citing "security reasons."
Meanwhile, residents in the southern Jubba regions have sent a complaint letter to the Al Shabab militant group, which controls most of the southern and central parts of Somalia and a large swath of the capital seeking permission to watch the world's largest sporting event.
But when community elders entered the Al Shabab administrative office in the southern key port town of Kismayo on June 12, they were told that they would be arrested if they came back with a similar request.
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