Mogadishu - An unidentified assailant gunned down a senior local official of the World Food Programme (WFP) late Friday in the southern Somali town of Merka as he exited a mosque, witnesses said.

Abdi Naser Aden Musse, a senior WFP staffer, sustained several bullet wounds in the chest and head just after exiting the mosque, Mumin Abdirahman, a Merka resident, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa by phone. Merka is about 100 kilometres from Mogadishu.

"He died in the hospital from his injuries. I saw him with a pool of blood in all parts of his chest," said Abdirahman.

Mogadishu- Somali Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab, which
last month ordered the closure of Mogadishu's main airport, said
Thursday it may allow air traffic to once again land.

"Our decision to close the airport is not Holy Koran verse; we can
change our decision to close the airport if the people come to
negotiate," Sheikh Muktar Robow told reporters in a teleconference.

Al-Shabaab last month vowed to shoot down any plane that landed

Mogadishu - A Pakistani oil worker has been kidnapped in northern Somalia, a local official said Wednesday.

"A Pakistani oil worker was kidnapped early Wednesday morning," Yusuf Ahmed, head of Action Against Human Trafficking, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

"Two of his bodyguards kidnapped him as he carried out a survey."

Nairobi/Mogadishu - Fresh clashes between Islamic insurgents and African Union peacekeepers have broken out in the Somali capital Mogadishu, reports said Wednesday.

The BBC reported that insurgents attacked the AU peacekeepers, who responded with tank and artillery fire, late on Tuesday night.

Some of the AU fire landed in residential neighbourhoods, killing at least ten civilians, eyewitnesses told the BBC.

No AU casualties were reported.

Heavy clashes have been ongoing since insurgents shelled Mogadishu airport last Friday as an AU plane defied a flight ban.

No planes had landed since Tuesday after insurgent group al- Shabaab said it would destroy any aircraft that attempted to touch down at the airport.

Mogadishu  - Somali gunmen have kidnapped two Western aid workers from a town near the Ethiopian border, residents said Tuesday.

"We are not aware of their nationalities, but they are a white man and a white woman," Ali Isse Osman, a resident in the town of Gura'el, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Osman said that the pair were abducted from the border town of Las Anod and then brought to Gura'el, 530 kilometres north of Mogadishu.

Criminal gangs looking for ransom and Islamic insurgents battling Somalia's transitional federal government often target foreigners for abduction.

Mogadishu  - Almost 9,500 Somali civilians have been killed since early 2007 as the government battles a bloody insurgency, a human rights body said Tuesday.

Ali Sheikh Yasen, deputy chairman of the Mogadishu-based Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that a total of 9,474 civilians had died in the insurgency, with 838 deaths coming since June.