About half the population of Mogadishu have fled their homes |
Monday, March 22, 2010
Mogadishu's mayor has ordered around 1,000 Somali refugees to move away from the city's main airport, citing security concerns.
Mayor Abdurisaq Mohamed Nor suggested that insurgent group al-Shabab could use refugees' shelters as cover to launch an attack on the airport.
Many of the refugees, who have fled fighting in other parts of the city, are protesting against the order.
Al-Shabab is fighting the weak, UN-backed government.
Government forces control a few small parts of Mogadishu - including the airport.
About half of Mogadishu's residents have fled their homes after two decades of conflict.
The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says the airport has not yet come under fire from the shanty-town of Karan, where people have built temporary shelters out of whatever they can find.
But he says the airport has been attacked from other parts of the city.
The mayor said the structures were illegal and that he had "intelligence information" that some people were taking money from al-Shabab to build shelters.
"Only a single rocket-propelled grenade fire on a single plane could destroy the entire airport system - we will never accept or wait that to happen," he said.
Earlier this month, the mayor told residents of the city's battle zones to leave those areas.
But a woman who had fled to Karan after her husband was killed elsewhere in the city told the BBC she had nowhere else to take her eight children.
"Where do I take them? We will not move out of here alive," she said.
Source: BBC