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Mogadishu - The United Nations food agency said on Thursday that it had signed a deal with a Somali group to distribute food to displaced civilians in Mogadishu, a day after aid groups said a catastrophe was unfolding.
The World Food Programme (WFP) suspended food distribution to more than 75 000 people in the city on October 17 when security forces detained the agency's top official in its Mogadishu office for nearly a week.
"WFP has just signed an agreement with a Somali NGO to provide prepared food for a total of 50 000 malnourished people at 10 locations in Mogadishu and is bringing food into Mogadishu to start the operation," WFP spokesperson Peter Smerdon said in a statement received by AFP.
Smerdon said the agency would "resume distributions in Mogadishu as soon as possible with the agreement of the TFG (transitional federal government)".
On Wednesday, the UN refugees agency said up to 90 000 civilians were displaced in Mogadishu in fighting on Saturday, Sunday and Monday that was "the worst in months".
About 46 000 have settled along the road linking Mogadishu to Afgooye, 30km west of Mogadishu while another 42 000 either fled for areas outside the city or moved to safer neighbourhoods within, according to UNHCR.
Forty humanitarian groups warned that a catastrophe was unfolding in Somalia and that they could no longer meet the war-torn country's growing relief needs.
"There is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in South Central Somalia," they said in a statement, whose signatories include CARE, Oxfam and Islamic Relief, among others.
Smerdon said the agency had been distributing food in Afgoye township, about 30km west of the capital, where most displaced people are camped in squalid settlements.
"WFP and its partners are assessing where exactly people who left Mogadishu at the weekend went - in addition to the Afgoye area - and will expand its distributions both to newly displaced and others who fled the city earlier in the year as soon as possible," he explained.
The fighting is worsening an already dire humanitarian situation which has left 1.5 million - almost a sixth of the total Somali population - in need of humanitarian assistance.
Mogadishu has been the scene of daily fighting or attacks since Ethiopian-backed government forces ousted an Islamist movement from the country, setting off a deadly insurgency.
Civilians are bearing the brunt of the violence and hundreds are estimated to have been killed since June, although accurate death tolls are not available.
SOURCE: AFP, November 2, 2007