Somali Islamist militants killed two Somalis holding British passports and two Kenyans at a school in the central town of Baladwayne last night.
"Al Shaabab fighters entered the town and suddenly attacked houses of government officials," a local resident said. "Then they attacked a school where they killed two Kenyans, a British woman and a Somali man with a British passport."
Local people are terrified because people who were involved in educating our people were killed last night Somali witness
Al Shabaab is a militant Islamist group that the United States put on its list of foreign terrorist organizations in late February, for what Washington says is links to al Qaeda.
It is leading an insurgency against the Somali interim government and its Ethiopian military allies in the capital Mogadishu, in which at least 6,500 have been killed in the last year.
Another witness said that the militants had left the town on Monday.
"Local people are terrified because people who were involved in educating our people were killed last night," he said. The British man, who is ethnically Somali, had come back to his home to build a school, he said.