Gunman kills government minister

Tension rose in the southern Somali town of Baidao on Friday after an unidentified gunman killed a federal government minister as he left a mosque after prayers.

An eye-witness said Abdalla Deerow Isaq, the Constitution and Federalism Minister in the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), was shot at point-blank rage.

"We came out of the mosque and then we heard a gunshot and next thing Deerow was on the ground," said a businessman who was at the mosque. "He was rushed to hospital but he was already dead," he added.

The situation in Baidao, the temporary seat of the government, "is very confusing [and] this has caused a great deal of uncertainty", a member of the transitional parliament said from the town which is 240 km northwest of the capital Mogadishu, where the TFG is based.

"All MPs [members of parliament] are hunkering down in their homes," he added. "No one feels safe until we find out what is behind this." Most of the 275-member assembly are in Baidoa.

Deerow served as the speaker of the former Transitional National Assembly in the previous interim government set up in Arta, Djibouti, in 2000.

The killing came a day after 18 members of the TFG cabinet resigned and a motion of no-confidence in the government was tabled in Parliament. The ministers said they resigned because the government had failed to spearhead reconciliation with the Union of Islamic Courts, which controls Mogadishu.

It was unclear if the debate on the no-confidence motion, which is due to be held on Saturday, would go ahead after the slaying of the minister.

Somalia has had no functional central authority for the past 14 years, following the collapse in 1991 of the government of President Muhammad Siyad Barre. The TFG, which was set up in Kenya in October 2004, has so far failed to exert effective control over the whole country.

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