KISMAYO, Somalia May 18 (Garowe Online) - Unidentified gunmen have shot and killed a Somali aid worker in the southern port city of Kismayo, underscoring the continued dangers humanitarian aid workers face in the chaotic Horn of Africa country.

Ahmed Bariyow, the director of Somalia's Horn Relief aid agency, was shot and killed Saturday night by three masked men armed with pistols, a relative confirmed to Garowe Online.

It is not clear who killed the Somali aid worker or why he was targeted. But Somalia's interim government, which is combating insurgents in Mogadishu, has no presence in Kismayo, the country's third-largest city.

Clan militias who control Kismayo have been unable to prevent or investigate a series of brutal murders targeting aid workers, including a landmine explosion in January that killed two aid workers from France and Kenya, and their Somali driver.

Mr. Bariyow was a well-known character in across Somalia's humanitarian aid circles.

In the 1990s, he worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Kismayo. In later years, he transferred to the UNHCR office in Bossaso, a northern port city in the semiautonomous region of Puntland.

Most recently, before taking a leading position at Horn Relief, the late Mr. Bariyow worked for the UN-HABITAT in Garowe, the capital city of Puntland.

An inside source in Kismayo told Garowe Online that "clan-related motives" cannot be ruled out as reason for Mr. Bariyow's killing.

Source: Garowe Online