Radio SIMBA Shuts Down  By Somali Government forces

 Somali government forces have shut a radio station that interviewed a top Islamist insurgent commander who claimed responsibility for an assassination bid on the prime minister.

The forces ordered Mogadishu-based Simba Radio off the air and arrested its chief Abdullahi Ali Farak and a journalist, according to a reporter who works there.

The government forces came this morning, and  entered the radio station and arrested the boss and a journalist,.

The radio on Wednesday evening interviewed Sheikh Mukhtar Robow, a radical Islamist leader, who said he was behind a suicide attack earlier in the day on an Ethiopian army base near a hotel Bakin where Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi was staying.

Two Ethiopian soldiers were killed in the attack in Baidoa town, about 250 kilometers northwest of the capital.

Sheikh Mukhtar - also known as Abu Mansur  presented himself in the interview as a spokesman for the Somali Islamist movement in Mogadishu, but he has commanded numerous other militia fighters over the past decade.

Last month, Somali security forces besieged and opened fire at Shabelle radio, destroying equipment and forcing it to close for 15 days after they accused one of Shabelle reporters of hurling a grenade at a police patrol.

Rights groups have called for protection for journalists in Somalia, where at least seven reporters have been killed this year.

A dozen journalists have also been arrested and five others have been ambushed and robbed.

So far this year, Somalia ranks as the the second deadliest country worldwide after Iraq for journalists, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists