MOGADISHU, Somalia - A long-serving and prominent Somali lawmaker, Osman Elmi Boqore was gunned down in Mogadishu on Sunday afternoon, Garowe Online reports.

Mogadishu police said the MP was assassinated by two men armed with pistols in the capital's northern Kaaraan district and escaped the scene immediately before security forces arrived.

Boqore, who became a former lieutenant colonel in the Army before joining the politics in the post-conflict era served once as deputy house speaker in 2007.

The slain legislator took part in the 1964 Ethiopian–Somali Border War in which he was injured, according to his colleague in the national assembly, Ahmed Moalim Fiqi.

He is the first parliamentarian to be killed this year in the long chaotic Horn of Africa country. The MP's son was also killed in the capital, November 2005.

The Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group, Al-Shabaab has claimed responsibility for the assassination of the oldest member of the current Somali parliament.

GAROWE ONLINE