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Somalia: Head of humanitarian chief, driver killed in Mogadishu
Thu. June 12, 2008 08:34 am.- By Bonny Apunyu. -
(SomaliNet) The head of a Somali humanitarian group and his driver were killed in Mogadishu on Wednesday, by gunmen two days after the Somali government and its opposition rivals signed a truce, an aid worker and witnesses said.
The head of the Women and Child Care organisation (WOCCA), Mohamed Abdulle Mahdi, and his driver were gunned down in northern Mogadishu's Suqbad neighborhood, Nur Mohamed of WOCCA reported.
"His car was passing in a crowded street when three men armed with pistols approached and shot them several times on the head," said Abdulahi Warsameh, a grocer who witnessed the killings.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, Islamist militants killed two policemen moments after a radical Islamist leader rubbished the accord.
In recent months, several aid workers have been kidnapped or killed in the troubled Horn of Africa nation, choking off humanitarian operations.
WOCC was established in 1996 by Somali professionals to boost women and children rights in the Middle Shabelle region. The group is based in the region's capital Jowhar.
The killings occurred two days after Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein and Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) chief Sheikh Sharif Ahmed signed agreements at UN-sponsored talks in Djibouti, including a three-month truce which is to come into force within a month.
Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, an influential radical cleric, has rejected the deal. The sheikh, accused of links to Al-Qaeda by the United States, argued it failed to set a clear deadline for the withdrawal from Somalia of Ethiopian troops.
Ethiopian forces, who were deployed late 2006, helped oust Islamists militants from much of the country where they had imposed Sharia law.
Numerous similar accords have been violated since 1991 when an uprising ousted dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, transforming the nation into an ungovernable sprawl of fiefdoms.
But the European Union joined the African Union, the United Nations and the United States in welcoming the accord, but urged the feuding sides to faithfully implement it.
"It is now crucial that all parties stick to the agreement," EU humanitarian chief Louis Michel said in a statement.
The Somali rivals also agreed to facilitate the passage of much-needed humanitarian supplies to around 2.6 million Somalis, although a similar pledge on May 16 went unheeded.
The United Nations expects 3.5 million Somalis will be in need of aid by the end of the year due to a prolongued drought and spiralling inflation.
"I remind all parties to ensure that humanitarian aid workers have full and secure access across the country," added Michel, who has been a frontliner in Western efforts to restore stability in the nation of up to 10 million people.
The African Union has deployed some 2,600 peacekeepers in Somalia -- short of the pledged 8,000 troops -- but they have failed to stem violence which rights groups say has killed 6,000 civilians over the past year.
The UN Security Council is considering deploying a peacekeeping force but no concrete decision has been made yet.
The world body's appetite for Somali peacekeeping operations faded after a joint UN-US peace-enforcement mission ended disastrously in the 1990s with the death of many peacekeepers and US special forces. -AFP
News Category: Somalia
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