Somali gunmen kill peace activist
2008-06-23 09:03
Mogadishu - Gunmen killed a Somali peace activist and kidnapped a United Nations official, said officials on Sunday, the latest in a string of attacks against aid and rights workers in the stricken African nation.
Mohamed Hassan Kulmiye, a senior official with the Mogadishu-based Centre For Research and Dialogue (CRD), was shot dead on Sunday in Beledweyne town, the capital of Hiraan region.
"He was killed an hour ago inside his office, but we do not know the motive of the murder," said one of his colleagues who requested to remain unnamed. Several witnesses confirmed his death.
The CRD, a local charity that promotes social, economic and political development, was involved in the UN-mediated talks between the government and opposition groups in Djibouti, which ended in a truce agreement on June 09.
Kulmiye's killing took place a day after gunmen kidnapped Hasan Mohamed Ali, a Somali working with the UN refugees agency at his residence in Elashabiyaha, south of the capital Mogadishu.
'Free Hasan Mohamed Ali!'
Another Somali UN official said: "We don't know where they took him after snatching him from his house about 20:44 last evening."
"I saw four men armed with machine guns talking to him in front of his house and minutes later, they kidnapped him," said Farah Abdi Mohamed, a neighbour.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres demanded his release, warning that actions could choke distribution of relief supplies to suffering Somalis.
"We demand the immediate and unconditional release of Hasan Mohamed Ali," he said in a statement released in Nairobi.
"He and other Somali staff are absolutely crucial in the provision of life-saving humanitarian aid for tens of thousands of innocent civilian victims of the ongoing conflict in their country."
"The abduction represented another blow to humanitarian efforts to alleviate the suffering of an estimated one million uprooted people inside Somalia," added Guterres, who left Kenya on Saturday after a three-day mission that focused on the dilemma facing Somali refugees.
'Hostages must be released'
Since April, gunmen had been holding five aid workers - two Italians, a Briton, a Kenyan and a Somali - who had been seized in southern Somalia and their whereabouts were yet to be known.
The same month, the UN and aid groups scaled down operations in Somalia owing to increased insecurity, largely blamed on Islamist militants who had waged a deadly guerrilla war since they were ousted by joint Somali-Ethiopian forces in early 2007.
In Nairobi, Somali leaders of the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia (ARS) - an umbrella group for the Somali opposition - urged gunmen to release the aid workers.
"The abduction of aid workers is a criminal act that will not help Somalia. This must stop and those kidnapped must be released," said ARS chief Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed.