From: Yemane Natnael (yemane_natnael@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Sep 10 2008 - 10:34:05 EDT
Somali gunman assassinates legislator
Wed 10 Sep 2008
BAIDOA, Somalia (Reuters) - A gunman shot dead a Somali member of
parliament in the latest assassination in the anarchic Horn of Africa
nation, witnesses said on Wednesday.
Mohamed Osman Maye, a government legislator, was attacked as he
left a mosque in Baidoa, the provincial capital of Somalia's parliament
late on Tuesday, they said.
One witness, Ali Hussein, said an unidentified man with a pistol shot him three times in the chest before escaping.
Officials promised a probe, though they have had little success in the past catching those behind similar killings.
"God never forgives the killings of the innocent," parliament
speaker Sheikh Aden Mohamed told Reuters. "We are investigating and we
hope we shall finally get the culprits."
Suspicion for assassinations generally falls on clan militia and
Islamist insurgents who are fighting the Somali government and their
Ethiopian military allies.
Some Islamist leaders have said, however, that the government is
behind the killings to discredit them and stir the international
community into an intervention.
Since early 2007, insurgents have been using Iraq-style tactics
including bombings and assassinations of officials, aid workers,
intellectuals and Ethiopian soldiers.
Thousands have died, and about one million people live as internal
refugees. Somalia has had no effective central rule since the 1991
ouster of a military dictator.
http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN050345.html
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