A Somali federal parliamentary lawmaker was fatally shot Saturday in Mogadishu, security officials said.
Al-Shabab militants armed with pistols shot the lawmaker, Osman Ilmi Boqorre, as he was visiting his new house that is under construction in the Karan neighborhood north of Mogadishu, according to witnesses.
A statement released by Radio Andalus, the terror group’s official mouthpiece, said “Members of our Mujahidiin shot and killed the longest-serving member of the parliament of the apostate government.” Al-Shabab is allied with al-Qaida.
Boqorre died before the first responders arrived, police say.
Boqorre, was the oldest member of the current Somali Parliament. He was a lieutenant colonel in the army and became the deputy speaker of the Parliament of the then Somali Transitional Government (TFG) in 2007, but he resigned for health-related reasons in 2010.
One of his colleagues in the Parliament, Dahir Amin Jessow, was among those who first received news of the killing, and told VOA that Boqorre was known as a peacemaker and negotiator.
“He was a peace-loving person, the oldest, and one of the very active members of the Parliament,” Jessow said.
Boqorre is the first lawmaker to be killed in Mogadishu this year.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the killing, but al-Shabab militants typically take credit for the assassinations of lawmakers, civil servants, other government workers and selective civil society activists.
In 2005, the group claimed responsibility for killing the late lawmaker’s son, Khadar Osman, in Mogadishu.
It’s the second high-profile assassination this week. On Wednesday, al-Shabab militants killed Deputy Attorney General Mohamed Abdirahman Mursal in Mogadishu.
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