A Somali aid worker was killed overnight by unidentified gunmen, a few hours from the alleged abduction of another two foreign relief workers. The local media this morning reports that Omar Sharif, who worked for the Care International aid agency, was shot dead in the southern Somali port town of Merka (around 90km south of Mogadishu) by masked gunmen outside a mosque, killing him on the spot. Local authorities have opened an investigation into the motives of the killing and identity of the gunmen. Sharif was killed just hours after the alleged kidnapping of two European aid workers, believed to be Dutch and Belgian nationals working for the Belgian arm of Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF - Doctors Without Borders), according to the local and international media. MSF has not confirmed the abduction, reporting that it "lost contact with a medical team in the Bakool region" since yesterday. MSF is among the only international aid agencies still operating in Somalia, where wide insecurity and violence impede international staff from assisting the population. Based on UN estimates, Somalia is theatre to one of the world's worst humanitarian crises with over a third of the population dependent on international aid. [BO]