Gunman Attacks Somalia's Doctors Without Borders HQ, 1 Dead
A gunman on Thursday killed a Western aid worker and seriously wounded his Indonesian colleague when he opened fire at a Doctors Without Borders compound in Mogadishu, police and medical sources said.
It was not immediately clear what motivated the attack in Mogadishu, which is the scene of frequent clashes pitting insurgents against pro-government troops and is often considered the world's most violent capital.
"One of the humanitarian workers was killed, the other one was wounded", a Somali police officer told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity following the shooting.
Sources at Mogadishu's main Medina hospital described the dead man as a "Westerner" and his injured colleague as an Indonesian but there was no official confirmation of their identity.
The Indonesian was hit in the thigh and the bullet struck an artery, causing severe bleeding, the sources said.
"He's injured. He's seriously bleeding but he's still alive. The other man is dead but the body's still here," Dumiya Ali, a medical worker at Medina told AFP.
Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres - MSF) confirmed that such an incident took place inside its compound in the Somali capital but was unable to comment on casualties.
"We confirm that a serious shooting incident has taken place in the MSF compound in Mogadishu. At this point we don't have more information about the scale and the extent of this incident," the organization said in a statement.
"MSF is doing everything it can to ensure the security of its staff."
Witnesses said an argument broke out in the compound and the gunman started shooting. It was not clear whether he was detained or managed to escape.
The shooting is the latest attack on humanitarian officials in the Horn of Africa nation, one of the most dangerous places in the world for aid workers and one of the regions that most needs them.
Three regions of south Somalia are still in a state of famine, and close on 250,000 people are in danger of dying of starvation, according to the U.N.
Somalia, ravaged by near uninterrupted civil war for the past two decades was also the Horn of Africa country hardest hit by this year's bruising drought.
Last week a gunman killed three Somali aid workers, including two World Food Program staff, in the central Hiran region.
In mid-October two Spaniards working for MSF were seized by gunmen in Kenya's Dadaab refugee camp that lies 100 kilometers from the Somali border and that is home to several hundred thousand Somali refugees. The two women were reportedly driven into Somalia by their captors.
The head of the U.N. refugees agency Antonio Guterres slammed the kidnapping as "unacceptable".
Source: Agence France Presse
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