Somali aid workers in crisis talks after killings

By Abdi Skeikh

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Local aid workers in Somalia held crisis meetings on Sunday as anxiety rose over growing insecurity and the unexplained killings of humanitarian staff.

Unidentified gunmen have killed at least three aid workers in the anarchic Horn of Africa country this year and are holding four of their foreign colleagues hostage.

Fears were raised further in the past week by leaflets threatening local NGO workers with death if they did not quit their jobs.

Aid sources said most agencies working in Somalia were discussing suspending operations in Mogadishu and the south.

"It really is the end of the world if we now have to face death just because we are helping poor people," said a local doctor who asked not to be identified.

In the latest violence, men armed with pistols shot dead the deputy head of a German charity south of the capital on Friday.

A week ago, gunmen killed Osman Ali Ahmed, the local head of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), in a similar attack.

The governor of Baidoa, which hosts Somalia's parliament, said on Sunday that UNDP staff had withdrawn from the town.