SOMALIA: Gunmen shot dead a Somali minister outside a mosque yesterday in what a cabinet colleague called a "terrorist action" at the interim government's provincial base in Baidoa.
Witnesses said assailants opened fire on the constitution and federalism minister, Abdallah Deerow Isaq, as he left prayers - an attack sure to heighten tensions in the violence-plagued Horn of Africa nation which many fear is sliding towards war.
"It looks like an organised assassination . . . We are very sorry and are condemning this terrorist action," the information minister, Mohamed Abdi Hayr, said from Baidoa. "They shot him as he was leaving the mosque then ran off."
A Baidoa hospital nurse said Isaq, a former schoolteacher, came in with four bullet wounds in the heart and chest.
After the attack, the government blocked roads leading out of the town and hundreds of protesters angered by the killing took to the streets, burning tyres and looting stores.
Formed in 2004 in the 14th attempt to restore central rule to Somalia since the 1991 ousting of a military dictator, the government's authority has been challenged by the rise of an Islamist movement that took Mogadishu and other towns in June.
Born out of sharia courts created from the mid-1990s to restore some order to Mogadishu during a period of anarchy and violence, the Islamists defeated US-backed warlords in Mogadishu and have since expanded to take other towns.
With Ethiopian troops now said to be in Somalia to support the government, and Eritrea believed by many to be arming the Islamists, many Somalis are bracing for full-scale conflict.
A man suspected of being involved in the shooting was arrested mid-afternoon in Baidoa, Mr Hayr said, without giving his identity. Other sources there, however, said he was a young Muslim fundamentalist based at the same mosque.
Islamist rulers in Mogadishu denied involvement, saying Ethiopia was behind the killing to destabilise its neighbour.
"Ethiopia is behind the killing because its trained militia killed the minister," Islamist leader Sheikh Sharif Ahmed said.
Ethiopia did not immediately respond to the accusation but charged Eritrea with actively supporting radical Islamists in Somalia.
"If there is anyone who is reluctant to support peace and stability in Somalia, it is only the Eritrean government that is trying to disturb the region by allying itself with extremist elements," an Ethiopian ministry of information statement said.
Shocked diplomats and analysts said the shooting could have been by an Islamist militant or linked to internal divisions within the government.
A no confidence motion on Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi is due to be debated in parliament today.
In what government sources said was an effort to draw the Islamists into peace talks, 18 ministers and other top officials quit the government on Thursday.