Four arrested in Somalia in killing of aid worker

MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Police in northwestern Somalia have detained four suspects in connection with the killing of a prize-winning Italian aid worker, the region's interior minister said Wednesday.

A lone gunman shot and killed Annalena Tonelli on Sunday in Borama, a town 580 miles northwest of Mogadishu. She was killed on the grounds of the tuberculosis hospital she had founded there.

Borama is in the region known as Somaliland, which set up its own administration and declared its independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991 as civil war raged across much of the southern part of the country following the ouster of longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Somaliland's Interior Minister Ismael Adan Osman told The Associated Press the suspects were detained Tuesday and Wednesday. He said authorities were "90 percent" certain that one of the men was the killer and the other three were connected to the killing.

Osman declined to elaborate, saying investigations were continuing.

He described the shooting as an "isolated incident" and said the motive was still not known.

Six other Westerners working in Borama were evacuated to Hargeisa as a precaution, he said.

Somalia has been beset by chaos and violence, with no central government since Siad Barre was ousted. Somaliland, however, has been relatively stable, avoiding much of the violence that has plagued the rest of the nation in the Horn of Africa.

Much of the country's infrastructure has been destroyed, causing Somalis to rely on aid groups and charities for health care.

Tonelli, 60, had worked in Somalia and neighboring Kenya for 33 years, setting up clinics to fight tuberculosis, and creating awareness about the harmful effects of female circumcision and HIV/AIDS -- even though discussing the deadly disease is a taboo in the Muslim nation.

Fluent in Somali, she had lived in Borama since 1996. Earlier this year, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees awarded Tonelli the 2003 Nansen Refugee Award for her work.