Mogadishu - Unknown Somali gunmen have killed a senior worke

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.

New Delhi - India has deployed its navy in the Gulf of Aden near Somalia to protect Indian commercial vessels from pirates as 18 Indian sailors were being held captive by Somali pirates, news reports said Friday.

A warship, INS Tabar, has started patrolling the Gulf of Aden and the number of ships would be increased, a Defence Ministry official told the Times of India newspaper.

The decision came after Somali pirates on September 15 hijacked a Japanese-owned merchant vessel, MV Stolt Valor, which had
18 Indians among its 22 sailors on board.

The move to guard the African waters was prompted after protests by the sailors' families seeking their release.

Nairobi - Somali insurgents have said they will take their fight to Kenya if the neighbouring nation carries out a plan to train Somali government troops.

Kenyan Foreign Affairs Minster Moses Wetangula recently offered to provide training to around 10,000 troops currently taking a hammering in Somalia's bloody Islamist insurgency.

"We will order all our holy warriors to start the jihadi war inside Kenya," the BBC quoted spokesman Sheikh Muktar Robow as saying.

Almost daily battles have blighted Somalia since Ethiopian troops invaded in 2006 to kick out the Islamist regime and put the transitional federal government back in power.

New Delhi, Oct. 11 : Armed Somalian pirates have released unharmed three Indians and 26 other members of the crew on board a hijacked cargo ship after keeping them in captivity for more than one and half months.

"The vessel has been released from Somali pirates and all crew are safe and healthy," Directorate General of Shipping said in a release.

The Indian crew released are Jeeva Kiran D''Souza of Kasargod in Kerala, Akbar Ali Rafeeque Juwale of Ratnagiri in Maharashtra and Anthony Clive Themudo of Goa.

Kiev- Ukraine's government on Friday claimed a controversial Ukrainian tank shipment hijacked by Somali pirates was destined for the Kenyan army, not wartorn South Sudan - making the fate of the freighter, its cargo, and its hapless 20-man crew even murkier than before.