Witnesses: Somali UN employee shot dead

Monday, October 20, 2008

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — Witnesses in southern Somalis said Monday that gunmen killed a Somali aid worker employed by the United Nations, another deadly attack against humanitarians in the war-ravaged country.

Resident Abdi Aden said three gunmen shot the employee of the U.N. Children's Fund, UNICEF, late on Sunday evening as he walked home in the southern town of Hudur.

A Somali colleague confirmed the death. He asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

Nairobi-based UNICEF spokeswoman Denise Shepard-Johnson said the organization was investigating reports of an attack.

Fourteen humanitarian workers have been killed in Somalia so far this year, including a U.N. employee shot three days ago as he left a mosque in the port of Merka.

It is unclear who is targeting the aid workers. Islamic insurgents control the town of Hudur. They have previously threatened specific agencies.

But the Somali transitional government also has an uneasy relationship with aid organizations. It accuses them of feeding and sheltering Islamic insurgents that it believes are hiding among civilians who have fled the fighting.

Clashes between the insurgents and the Somali government and their Ethiopian allies have displaced more than a million people this year. Thousands have been killed since Ethiopian troops entered the country in December 2006 in support of the shaky U.N.-backed government. The insurgents had taken control of the capital and much of the south.

But in recent months insurgents launched a series of attacks on Somali towns and now control the country's third largest city. The government, which many Somalis view as brutal and corrupt, has failed to deliver basic services and comes under daily attack in Mogadishu.

Most international aid workers have been pulled out of the country this year, leaving their operations in the hands of Somali staff. The organizations say Somalia is the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and around half the population of the country will be dependent on aid by the end of the year, but attention has been diverted by a series of attacks by Somali pirates on international shipping.

The failed state has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a socialist dictator in 1991 then turned their heavily armed clans on each other.

SOURCE: AP, Monday, October 20, 2008