Mogadishu — Gunmen ambushed and shot dead an Italian missionary sister and her bodyguard yesterday afternoon in Mogadishu.

At about 12.30 pm local time, Consolata missionary Sr Leonella Sgorbati, aged 65, was crossing the road between SOS Hospital where she worked and the SOS Village where she and four other sisters live.

Two gunmen emerged from behind taxis and kiosks that are found on that stretch of road at the entrance to the hospital and shot them.

Sr Leonella was rushed to the SOS Hospital and died shortly after.

"She realized that she was dying, because she kept saying 'I can't breath'. Her last words were: 'I forgive; I forgive'," according to her fellow sisters who spoke to CISA today in Nairobi.

Sr Leonella's body had seven bullet wounds, said the sisters, who are nurses at SOS Hospital. The two gunmen were arrested and investigations have been launched by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC).

The body of the missionary was flown to Nairobi last night in the company of Sr Annalisa Costardi, Sr Gianna Irene Peano and Sr Marzia Feurra.

A postmortem was scheduled for this morning, Sr Josephine Barbero, the Consolata Sisters regional superior in Kenya, said.

The requiem mass will take place on Thursday, September 21, 2006, at the Consolata Shrine Parish Westlands, Nairobi, starting 10.00 am. The body will be laid in the church from 9.00 am for viewing. She will be buried at Nazareth Hospital cemetery in Kiambu.

"I am sure she wanted to [be buried] in Kenya because she loved Kenya so much," Sr Josephine said.

Bishop Giorgio Bertin of Djibouti, also Apostolic Administrator of Somalia, will be present at the funeral.

Sr Leonella Sgorbati, nee Rosa, was born in Gazzola, Piacenza, Italy, on December 9, 1940. She joined the Consolata Missionary Sisters in San Fre, Cuneo, in May 1963 and took her perpetual vows on November 19, 1972.

After nursing school in England (1966-1968), she was appointed to Kenya, where she arrived on September 6, 1970. From then until 1983 she served alternately at Consolata Hospital Mathari, Nyeri, and Nazareth Hospital in Kiambu on the northern outskirts of Nairobi.

In mid-1983, Sr Leonella started her advanced studies in nursing and in 1985 became the principal tutor at the school of nursing attached to Nkubu Hospital, Meru.

On November 26, 1993, she was elected regional superior of the Consolata Missionary Sisters in Kenya, a duty she performed for six years.

After a sabbatical, in 2001 she spent several months in Mogadishu, Somalia, looking at the possibility of setting up a nursing school in the hospital run by the SOS Village organization.

Hermann Gnemer School of Registered Community Nursing opened in 2002, with Sr Leonella in charge. The first 34 nurses graduated from the school this year, awarded certificates and diplomas by the World Health Organization (WHO) because Somalia has had no government since 1991.

Sr Leonella was keen to train tutors for the nursing school. She returned to Kenya with three of her newly graduated nurses, two girls and a young man, to register them for further training at Medical Training College (MTC).

Having succeeded, after a struggle, to secure them the necessary visa, funding and registration at MTC, she started scouting in Uganda for hospitals ready to offer her other students specialist training.

She faced difficulties of obtaining her own re-entry visa to Mogadishu, due to the new rules of the Islamic Courts that now control the city and its environs. She managed to go back to Mogadishu only on September 13.