Aid Group Cuts Back Mogadishu Presence

Aid group Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres - MSF) said Thursday it had halved its operations in Somalia's war-torn capital after two employees were shot dead last month.

MSF also said it closed down operations in Mogadishu's Hodan district, where it was helping some 200,000 people who fled other Somali regions hit by drought and famine.

It also shut down two of its largest medical centers for treating malnutrition, measles and cholera.

"It is hard to close health services in a location where the presence of our medical teams is genuinely life-saving everyday," the group's director Christopher Stokes said in a statement.

"But the brutal assassination of our colleagues in Hodan makes it impossible for us to continue working in this district of Mogadishu."

On December 29, the two foreign MSF workers were killed by a local employee believed to have had a disagreement with his employer. He was later arrested.

Somalia is one of the most dangerous countries in the world and several aid workers and other foreigners have been killed in recent years.