Deadly Attack on UN Official Raises Fears Aid Groups May Scale Back Somalia Operations

Residents in Mogadishu, Somalia say they fear the apparent murder ofthe director of the U.N. Development Program there may cause aid groupsto further scale down their operations and deepen the country'shumanitarian crisis. As VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu reports from ourEast Africa Bureau in Nairobi, a string of targeted attacks againsthumanitarian workers in Somalia is also threatening a peace accord.  

Mogadishuresident Aden Abdullahi Mahdi says Somali communities are mourning thedeath of Osman Ali Ahmed, a Somali national who was killed by unknowngunmen late Sunday as he left a mosque with his son and brother insouth Mogadishu.

Ahmed was shot at close-range several times in the head and chest. His brother was also shot and seriously wounded.  

"Weare very sorry because the people, they are starving very badly," Mahdisaid. "The people are suffering. But we cannot stop the killings. All we can say is we are very, very, very sad about such killings,nothing else."
 
The attack follows last month's kidnapping ofanother top U.N. official in Mogadishu. The head of the U.N. refugeeagency in the Somali capital, Hassan Mohamed Ali, was abducted from hishome on June 21. Nine days later, a local aid worker helping U.N.agencies distribute food to internally displaced people was gunned downnear Mogadishu's main Bakara market in what witnesses say was atargeted killing.  

In a statement to the media, the U.N.Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden saidSunday's killing was, in his words, "particularly outrageous andworrying at this critical time, when the need for humanitarianassistance is rapidly increasing."

Nearly three million Somaliansare estimated to be facing hunger because of insecurity, a prolongeddrought, high inflation, and food shortages. The situation isespecially critical in Mogadishu and the surrounding areas, where anIslamist-led insurgency against the country's secular Ethiopia-backedgovernment and Ethiopian troops has been raging for nearly 19 months.

Earlylast month, the government signed a peace deal with a moderate factionof the opposition Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, also knownas ARS. The deal, signed in Djibouti, gave both sides one month toimplement a cease-fire and called for the replacement of Ethiopiantroops by a U.N. force within the next four months.

Buthardliners in the alliance and a militant Islamist group called theShabab have vehemently opposed the deal. That has prompted speculationamong some Somalis that they may be working to undermine the truce andto discourage U.N. military intervention in Somalia.

A senioropposition member opposed to the Djibouti agreement, Jama MohamedKhalib, says ARS fighters are not targeting aid workers.

"Wedo not believe it is our resistance forces. They are against theEthiopian occupation," said Khalib. "Unless, of course, thesehumanitarian employees [have been] drawn into such problems, we regretthat innocent people have been killed."

The United Nations haspledged to continue its humanitarian operations in Somalia, but says itneeds more assistance from the Somali people to create a safeenvironment for aid and services to be delivered.