Ensure safety of aid workers, UN official urges

A senior United Nations humanitarian official has expressed "profound sorrow" at the killing of two British aid workers in northern Somalia, saying that no new UN workers would be sent to the area until it "stabilises". Jan Egeland, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said a total of four international aid workers had been killed in Somalia since mid-September. He called on the local authorities to take immediate action to "find and prosecute" those responsible for the killings, and to "ensure the safety and security of all aid workers in the area". The two aid workers, Richard Eyeington and his wife, Enid, were shot dead on Monday night by unknown gunmen at their home in a school compound in the town of Sheikh, where they both worked. The two had been working for the SOS Children's Villages NGO. A statement from the organisation said the couple had worked in Somaliland for a year to reopen the SOS school, which had been closed down in the 1970s during the regime of Muhammad Siyad Barre. The secondary school where the couple worked as a school principal and a teacher housed about 100 pupils. The motive of the killing was still unknown, the statement said, adding that the house had been sealed off and the school closed. Richard Pichler, the SOS Children's Villages secretary-general, said "the whole SOS family worldwide mourns the loss of two invaluable and very committed family members". The Somaliland authorities have called for an immediate investigation into the killings. President Dahir Riyale Kahin told journalists in Hargeysa, the main town in Somaliland, that his government would "do everything possible to arrest those who have committed this barbarous and inhuman crime". "We will also take all the necessary precautions to protect expatriates who are working in the country," the BBC quoted him as saying. The killing of the SOS workers came just two weeks after the murder of an Italian hospital director in the same area. Dr Annalena Tonelli was shot dead on 5 October in Somaliland, also by unknown attackers. The murders have raised international concern over the safety of relief workers in Somaliland. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in New York said existing UN activities in the area would not be suspended, but the 50 international staff there would confine their activities to the largest city in the area, Hargeysa. Rakiya Omar, who is the director of the international human rights organisation, African Rights, said local residents of Somaliland were also affected by increased lawlessness and what she termed "politicisation of justice". Rakiya cited a case in which the family of an 18-year-old man, who was stabbed to death in March by a fellow student in Sheikh town, was still seeking justice after his attacker was allegedly freed at the order of influential people. "It is little wonder that the government’s promise to render justice in the Tonelli case is regarded with cynicism in Somaliland, as intended largely to pacify the international community," Rakiya noted in a recent report entitled "Justice for Somalilanders too". "This is a complex case, but it illuminates some of the weakest aspects of the criminal justice system, including its vulnerability to political pressures," she wrote.