MOGADISHU July 8 (Xinhua) -- The Islamist Al-shabaab movement Tuesday denied being behind the killing of the Somalia chief of United Nations development agency this week and accused Ethiopian forces in Somalia of carrying it out.

    Osman Ali Ahmed, chief of Somalia office for United Nations Development Program, was shot dead Sunday by unknown gunmen as he left evening prayers from a mosque near his home in south Mogadishu.

    "All the Mujahedeen (fighters) are not behind his (Osman Ali's) killing and it is not becoming of them to kill important persons who help the Somali people on whose behalf we are fighting but the enemy of Allah (Ethiopia) are behind his killing," Muqtar Robow Abu Mansuur, spokesman for Al-shabaab Islamist movement told reports in a telephone press conference.

    Ahmed was the latest of string of killings and kidnapping of senior social and business leaders or local and international aid workers in the Somalia. Islamist insurgents groups often deny carrying out those killings.

    Somali government officials or the Ethiopian military commanders in Somalia have yet to comment on the latest insurgent allegations.

    Insurgent fighters opposed to the Somali transitional government and the presence of Ethiopian and other foreign forces in Somalia usually target Ethiopian troops and Somali government officials and forces.

    The fighters have been waging guerilla war since a joint Ethiopian and Somali government forces ousted an Islamist administration that had been in control in much of south and central Somalia.

    Somali government and Ethiopian troops accused the movement of threatening the national security of Ethiopia and of challenging the authority of the internationally recognized interim Somali government which was then based in the southern Somali town of Baidoa, 250 km southwest of Mogadishu.