Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Mogadishu traders committee spokesperson Abas Mohamed Duale was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in the capital's southern Debke neighbourhood.
"I saw three men intercepting the spokesperson's car. They sprayed gunfire on the vehicle, leaving him dead and his driver badly wounded," eyewitness Husein Mohamed said.
"We are very upset because we lost a man who was very important for the business community in Mogadishu," said Ali Mohamed Siad, chairperson of the capital's Bakara market.
Bakara market is Mogadishu's main commercial hub and had been ravaged by daily clashes between Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian-backed Somali government forces since 2007.
An initiative was launched earlier this year whereby Bakara traders were allowed to take charge of their own security, with a pledge from the government to stop raids so long as insurgents were also kept at bay.
The murdered Abas was a key figure in the implementation of the measure, which received support from Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein but met with some resistance from other key officials, including President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed.
The scheme had so far been relatively successful in restoring some stability to the Bakara area, where much of the Horn of Africa nation's trading is done.
Source: AFP, June 03, 2008