UN food shipment is ambushed

2006-04-10 15:18

Baidoa - Somali gunmen ambushed a United Nations food delivery convoy at a roadblock in central Somalia on Monday, sparking off a gunfight that left two people dead and nine injured.

The attack on the World Food Programme convoy took place just outside of Baidoa, 225 kilometres northwest of Mogadishu.

Mohamed Ibrahim Habsadeh, a Somali politician who escorted the convoy, said the two people killed belonged to the Somali militia hired by the WFP to protect the shipment.

Ibrahim Abdullahi Osman was wounded in the attack. The Somali lawmaker holds a seat in a Baidoa-based transitional government trying to take power in Somalia.

Habsadeh said Osman had tried to negotiate with the gunmen to allow the food shipment to pass unhindered.

He said the gunmen, however, they insisted on a portion of the food.

Habsadeh said: "We understand that the gunmen have no jobs, nor have they been encamped for rehabilitation, therefore they are hungry, but still we can't accept them when they try to use force to take the food aid intended for their parents and the poor."

The 72 trucks were loaded with maize, beans, cooking oil and porridge, and were intended for the drought-stricken people of Bay and Bakol regions.

Habsadeh said the convoy returned to Baidoa with the shipment intact.

- AP