Mogadishu  - A senior advisor to Somalia's parliamentary speaker has been killed in a confrontation between the speaker's bodyguards and Islamic insurgents, residents said Monday.

The insurgents attacked the speaker's home in Biadoa, 250 kilometres south of the capital Mogadishu, with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades late Sunday evening.

Mohamed Kushin, who was leaving as the battle broke out, was killed in the gunfight.

Kushin died in the hospital after being hit by several bullets. The rebels were heavily armed and fired indiscriminately, Mursal Daadey, a resident near the parliament speaker's home, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The parliamentary speaker was abroad at the time of the attack.

This is the first time in Biadoa that insurgents have launched a full-out attack on a top Somali government official's home.

Many MPs are based in Biadoa, which is the seat of Somalia's transitional federal government. More explosions, roadside bombs, assassinations and attacks have been reported in the area recently.

A grenade attack nine days ago injured two wives and five children of a Somali MP.

Somalia President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed recently escaped an assassination attempt in Mogadishu when insurgents attacked him as he travelled to Dijbouti, where United Nations-backed peace talks were taking place.

Violence has ramped up in Somalia since transitional federal government troops and their Ethiopian allies in late 2006 wrested control of Mogadishu from the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).

The UIC had stabilized the south and central regions, including the capital city, for six months.

Al-Shabaab, the armed wing of the courts, has since waged a bloody guerrilla war that shows no sign of letting up. The group said it would step up attacks after an US airstrike killed its leader Aden Hashi Ayro in early May.

Somalia has been in a state of anarchy since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, but aid agencies are now warning that the conflict is worsening and that the Horn of Africa nation is facing a massive humanitarian crisis. (dpa)