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Five Pakistani Muslim religious leaders have been shot dead at a mosque in Somalia's Puntland region, officials and witnesses say.
Masked men dragged the Pakistanis out of the mosque after dawn prayers on Wednesday and opened fire on them, a police official said.
Authorities had launched a manhunt for the killers, he said.
It was unclear why the men, who arrived in the town of Galkayo on Tuesday, were targeted.
The Pakistani embassy in neighboring Kenya said it was investigating the killings.
Abdurahman Mohamed Farole, the president of Puntland, which declared its semi-autonomous status in 1998, condemned the killing as a "terrible incident".
"We are still investigating who was behind it," he said.
The deaths follow the killing of Puntland's information minister in Galkayo last week.
'Anti-Islamic' elements
The Pakistani preachers belonged to a Muslim group known as Tabliq, Sheikh Mohamed Abdi Said, the spokesman of the Ahlu Sunna religious group in the area, said.
The group "has never advocated violence", he said, adding that their killing was "contrary to the teaching of Islam".
Somalia's anti-government al-Shabab fighters also condemned the murders.
"It is the worst thing in Somalia's history because the killing of religious men is unknown among the Somali community," Sheikh Ali Mohamoud Dhere, the group's spokesman, said in Mogadishu.
"This attack was carried out by anti-Islamic elements."
A report by the International Crisis Group released on Wednesday warned that if the regional government did not engage all of the semi-autonomous clans in the region, it "may break up violently, adding to the chaos in Somalia".
PHOTO CAPTION
Map of Somalia locating Puntland region
Al-Jazeera
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