US politician targeted in Somalia

A US congressman has had a narrow escape on a visit to Mogadishu after Somali insurgents fired mortars towards his plane as it was about to take off.

Airport officials told the BBC one mortar had landed at the airport as Donald Payne's plane was due to fly and five others after his plane departed.

Mr Payne had just met leaders of Somalia's government in the capital.

He had discussed ways that the international community might be able to help war-torn Somalia.

The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says Mr Payne had just held a half-hour news conference at the presidential palace in the capital when the attack happened, according to airport officials.

Abukar Hassan, a police officer at Mogadishu airport, told Reuters news agency: "One mortar landed at the airport when Payne's plane was due to fly and five others after he left and no-one was hurt."

Three people were wounded when one of the mortars hit a nearby neighbourhood, residents told Reuters.

Mr Payne had met President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, among other Somali officials.

The New Jersey Democrat said it was his first visit to Somalia since the early 1990s, when the country last had a stable government.

Fragile government

During his brief stop in one of the world's most dangerous cities, Mr Payne was escorted by African Union (AU) soldiers, who are deployed in Somalia on a peacekeeping mission.

Radical Islamist guerrillas committed to toppling the fragile transitional federal government control parts of the capital and much of central and southern Somalia.

Seventy-four-year-old Mr Payne is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's subcommittee on Africa and global health and a former head of the Congressional Black Caucus.

The former top US diplomat for Africa, Jendayi Frazer, became the first high-ranking American official to visit Somalia in more than a decade when she landed in Baidoa in 2007, but the security situation kept her from visiting Mogadishu.

US foreign policy on the Horn of Africa nation has been overshadowed by the killing of 18 US soldiers in Mogadishu in 1993.

Somalia, a country of about eight million people, has not had a functioning national government since warlords overthrew President Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other.