Somalia’s presidential spokesman had been shot twice at close range on Monday in the latest assassination attempt on government officials in the country, officials said on Tuesday. “He was shot in the neck and near the jaw,” a security official wanting anonymity said. “The gunman wanted to eliminate him as he was aiming for the head.” The source said that he had seen presidential spokesman Hussein Mohamed Mahamud Hubsired recovering in a African Union peacekeepers’ hospital in Mogadishu and that he was in a stable condition and was soon to be flown to Nairobi for treatment. The identity of gunman was not unknown, he added.
Insurgents from a militant Islamist movement ousted from Mogadishu routinely attack government soldiers and their Ethiopian backers, and have increasingly used tactics similar to Iraqi insurgents including assassinations, suicide bombings and roadside blasts.