By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Several gunmen ordered the Somali worker from his car and shot him in the head and chest, said Aden Mohamud Gelle, a witness who has a shop nearby.
"He fell on the ground writhing in pain," he said, adding that the bandits loaded his body into a car and drove off.
Peter Smerdon, a Nairobi, Kenya-based spokesman for the U.N. World Food Program, said the body was later dumped.
"We condemn this shocking killings of two WFP staffers in three days," Smerdon said.
On Tuesday, three gunmen shot Ibrahim Hussein Duale, a 44-year-old Somali who was a school feeding monitor in the Gedo region of central Somalia.
The U.N. keeps its international Somalia staff members in Kenya to shield them from the risk of attacks and kidnappings. In 2008, at least 13 aid workers were killed in Somalia, which has not had an effective government since 1991.
The latest killing comes a day after two aid workers kidnapped from Ethiopia by Somali gunmen were released in good health after more than three months in captivity.
French aid group Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) said in a statement that Japanese worker Keiko Akahane, 32, and Dutchman Willem Sools, 27, were staying at a safe location after their release Wednesday.
There was no information on how or why the workers were freed.
In the statement, Medecins du Monde quoted Sools as saying, "I regularly tell myself that I'm free; what a pleasure to see the stars!"
Akahane added: "I am in a dream!"
The two aid workers were seized in September in Ethiopia's eastern border region of Ogaden, where ethnic Somalis have been fighting for more than a decade for greater autonomy or independence.
The workers later were taken by their captors to the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Ogaden — the size of Britain and home to around 4 million people — has suffered severe food shortages due to drought and the ethnic Somali rebellion. However, Ethiopia restricts humanitarian agencies, journalists and human rights monitors in the area, saying it cannot guarantee their security.
Somalia has been beset by anarchy and an insurgency that has killed thousands of civilians and sent hundreds of thousands fleeing. Foreigners, journalists and humanitarian workers are frequently abducted for ransoms in the Horn of Africa nation. The United States fears Somalia could become a haven for al-Qaida.
Somalia is now at a dangerous crossroads.
The president resigned in late December, saying he has lost most of the country to Islamic insurgents, and the Ethiopian troops who have been protecting the fragile, U.N.-backed government have begun pulling out, leaving a dangerous power vacuum. Islamic groups are starting to fight among themselves for power.
AP Writer Malkhadir M. Muhumed contributed to this report from Nairobi, Kenya.