Gunmen in the southern Somali town of Baidoa, the base of the transitional Somali parliament have shot dead a senior Somali government official, local media reports said Sunday.
Hussein Runow Sheik, second deputy Governor of the southern Bay region, was killed by three men armed with pistols, as the Governor was on his way back to his home in Baidoa, 245 km south west of Mogadishu, the local Shabelle radio reported.
Somali government security forces, who have reportedly arrived at the scene minutes after the gunmen escaped, cordoned off the area and started house-to-house searches for the men.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the killing of the official but Islamist insurgent fighters have been waging deadly guerilla attacks on Somali government officials and security forces as well as Ethiopian troops backing it.
Baidoa, where the transitional Somali Parliament is based has been relatively stable but recently insurgent fighters have been carrying out attacks on targets of Somali government forces and Ethiopian military forces.
Insurgent fighters have killed numerous Somali government officials since the insurgency against the internationally recognized government began in early 2007, shortly after allied Ethiopian and Somali government forces toppled an Islamist administration that ruled much of south-central Somalia for the latter half of 2006.
The Islamist administrators were accused by Somali and Ethiopian governments of challenging the authority of the national institutions and of threatening the national security of Ethiopia.
A ceasefire agreement between a main faction of the opposition of the opposition Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS) and Somali government forces was supposed to come into effective on Nov. 5.
But a number of other opposition factions including the hard line Al-shabaab Islamist movement and a breakaway group of the ARS rejected the agreement and vowed to continue fighting until an Islamic state is established in Somalia.
(Xinhua News Agency November 10, 2008)
