Bodyguards for Somalia’s auditor general shot dead a government minister near the presidential palace, police said.

Capt. Mohamed Hussein said bodyguards escorting Nur Farah opened fire on a car carrying Abbas Abdullahi, the public works and reconstruction minister, near a checkpoint close to the palace.

It is not immediately clear what prompted the shooting. Security concerns are high in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, as the Al Shabaab extremist group continues to target the palace, military facilities and hotels with suicide car bombings and other attacks.

The car carrying the minister approached and trailed the car carrying the auditor general, promoting his bodyguards to open fire, Hussein said. The minister’s bodyguards fired back.

Another minister who was in the car with the deceased minister survived, Hussein said.

Somalia’s new cabinet was sworn in in late March after President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed was elected in February.

The minister who was killed, a former refugee who spent large parts of his life at a camp in Kenay, had been the youngest member of Somalia’s new cabinet.

Somalia’s information minister, Abdirahman Omar Osman, sent condolences over the death, calling Abdullahi a ‘brilliant and rising young star who showed commitment in serving his country’.

The new president has vowed to improve security in this Horn of Africa country, which has seen a quarter-century of chaos.

Meanwhile, al-Shabab has said it will step up its attacks after the president announced a new military offensive against the group, which has used Somalia as a base for attacks in East Africa, in particular neighboring Kenya.

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South Sudanese rival forces have renewed fighting in and around Guelguk and Mangok in Upper Nile, two senior rebel military officers who asked for anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media said at the rebel headquarters, Pagak.

The fighting, rebels said, began on Tuesday evening and escalated on Wednesday morning. The armed opposition said they had delivered a humiliating defeat to government troops and vowed ‘to spare no life’.

One officer said South Sudan’s government sent a combined force of militiamen and soldiers who he described as ‘people with no clue’.

“The genocidal regime sent its forces to liberate the unliberated land, he asserted.

When pressed to explain what he meant, he simply smiled and added, “People with no clue about what it means when fighting against sons and daughters of Gaatjaak Nuer in Gaatjaak land were brought from Juba to fight against us. So, I think they have been taught a serious lesson.”

A current government official with full knowledge of the fighting said in Juba that South Sudanese government sent troops to the newly-created Maiwut State a few days ago and that the real intention of the deployment is to liberate Guelguk from rebels because of the vast oil reserve there.

“The economic situation is not good now in the country. The government is looking for ways to control Guelguk and other areas around it so that we start oil operation there,” the official revealed.

Sources said government troops first attacked rebel positions on Tuesday evening and that the SPLA-IO Division 5^th responded Wednesday morning, resulting in the complete defeat of Juba-backed forces. The second officer asserted, “Our well-trained division annihilated them. Those of them who survived run back to Juadit forest where their base is located…the SPLA-IO is pursuing them.”

Major General Khor Chuol Giet, the 5^th Division Commander, urged civilians to be calm and warned that the SPLA-IO will spare no life of anyone who accepts Juba’s order to come to fight the SPLA-IO. He urges government troops to think twice before landing a foot in areas under his control.

“I want them [government soldiers] to think twice before coming to our areas. Don’t come or you will see with your own eyes,” he warned.

Maj. Gen. Giet blasted government forces, saying “they came here to kill their own mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters so they can keep collecting their ration from Kiir.”

For the last few days, there have been heavy movements of the armed opposition troops along Upper Nile main corridors, prompting some civilians to flee their homes. One rebel military intelligence officer claims the SPLA-IO was fully aware of the coming of government troops to Guelguk and Mangok areas.

There was no immediate comment from the office of SPLA-IO Spokesman.

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