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MOGADISHU, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A landmine exploded under a vehicle carrying journalists from the funeral of a murdered colleague in Mogadishu on Saturday, killing the co-owner of HornAfrik media house Ali Iman Shamarke, witnesses said.

Reuters reporter Sahal Abdulle, who was sitting next to Shamarke, suffered light head and facial injuries.

Together with other journalists in the violence-wracked Somali capital, the pair had just attended a funeral for a popular HornAfrik journalist shot dead earlier on Saturday.

In a recent interview with Reuters, Shamarke, who helped found the station, decried the senseless violence in Mogadishu where insurgents are battling the Somali government and its Ethiopian military allies.

"In nine years, I have not seen such a situation," he said, referring to when he returned to Somalia to start HornAfrik.

"I do not think there will be a winner at the end of the day from this killing of the mothers and children of Somalis." (additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne in Nairobi)

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