Gunmen killed a Somali working for the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Sunday, just two days after another local UN worker was assassinated in the failed Horn of Africa nation, witnesses said.
In the latest attack, three men armed with pistols and assault rifles ambushed the UNICEF worker as he was walking in the southern town of Hudur.
“A man with a pistol shot Muktar Mohammed Hassan several times in the head as he was walking in the center of town,” a UN source said. “He died on the spot and the assailants disappeared in the darkness.”
The attack came two days after another UN worker was murdered as he left a mosque in the central town of Merka.
Aid groups said last week that 24 aid workers — 20 of them Somalis — had been killed so far this year in Somalia, while more than 100 attacks against aid agencies had been reported.
Fighting in the capital Mogadishu, one of the world’s most dangerous cities, has escalated with insurgents now targeting local people working with foreign aid agencies, after most international staff were pulled out of the country.
Somalia’s government and its Ethiopian military allies have been fighting an Iraqi-style insurgency since early last year.
The fighting has killed nearly 10,000 civilians and forced more than 1 million people out of their homes, in what aid groups have described as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein, speaking in Mogadishu on Sunday, said his government needed international assistance to stem the menace of piracy off the Somali coast.
“We know that seven warships from NATO are already in the Somali coast, we welcome them ... We ask for the international community’s help to end piracy problems,” Nur told reporters.
Pirates are currently holding dozens of ships — including a Ukrainian vessel carrying tanks and other weapons bound for Kenya — and have asked for millions of dollars in ransom.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing