A judge and parliamentarian killed in Puntland, usually a relatively quiet part of the war-town country.
A Somali judge and lawmaker were gunned down Wednesday night in two separate incidents in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Somalia.
Ibrahim Elmi Warsame, a lawmaker in the Puntland regional parliament, was shot dead in the Puntland capital Garowe by masked gunman.
In a separate incident in the commercial capital Bossaso, Sheikh Muhammad Abdi Aware, a senior judge at a local court, was killed by masked gunmen as he left a mosque.
The gunmen fled the scene in both cases.
Aware, chairman of the higher court of Puntland, reportedly presided over trials of piracy suspects and members of the Islamist Al Shabaab organization, which is engaged in a civil war against forces of Somalia’s weak transitional government.
Aware recently sent four members to jail, which could have been a motive for the killings.
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Somalia’s transitional government has been fighting Al Shabaab for several years since the group launched a military campaign to install Sharia, or Islamic Law, in the country.
Basher Goth, a Somali analyst and former editor of Awdal news, said there could be three possible suspects in killing the officials.
"The first is Al Shabaab, who want to make their presence felt all over country," he told The Media Line. "They also see the Puntland and Somaliland administrations as secular regimes that are against their agenda of Islamization."
"Another possible suspect could be the Ogaden Liberation Front, whose members have been arrested by the Puntland government and handed over to Ethiopia," he said. "The third could be the local moderate Islamic clerics who have strained relations with the government and a number of their members have been arrested and sentenced by Puntland courts."
"This is just preliminary speculation," Goth said. "It could also be internal revenge by people connected to pirates or even tribal rivalry."
Somalia’s weak Western-backed interim government and the African Union peacekeeping force AMISOM are located in pockets of the capital Mogadishu, while Al Shabaab controls many other parts of the capital and regions in southern Somalia.
Puntland has become a launch-pad for pirates hijacking ships off the Somali coast and the Gulf of Eden and the regional court has meted out various jail sentences to convicted pirates.
The local authorities there have come under criticism for not doing enough to fight piracy and illegal activities off the coast.
"[Al Shabaab] want to undermine the stability of all the stable areas of Somalia, including Puntland and Somalia," Goth told The Media Line. "They will put fear into people and show that they are present everywhere in the country. They’re flexing muscles and saying that ‘at the right time we can take over.’"
The United States accuses Al Shabaab of being affiliated with Al-Qa’ida and is concerned that Somalia is turning into a safe haven for terrorists. Analysts say the conflict there could turn into a proxy war and spill over into the rest of the Horn of Africa, pulling in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Puntland is incapable of bringing stability to the rest of the country alone, Goth said.
"They can’t do much. All Puntland can do is take care of the peace and stability of Puntland, and even in that area they’re not doing well because the piracy is from Puntland."
Both Puntland and neighboring Somaliland, relatively quiet areas of Somalia, have been plunged into the national conflict over the past two years.
Puntland, home to a third of the Somali people, is a self-declared autonomous state which has been self governing since 1998. Unlike Somaliland, it does not seek independence from Somalia.