Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Seven months ago, Dahir Abdi Hassan, 19, fled from the near-daily violence in Mogadishu with five of his family members, including his parents.
In Mogadishu, Hassan's family ate two meals a day. Now, in this southern Somalia agricultural town of Jowhar, they make do with one meal a day as they live with a relative who also has to fend for his 10 children.
"I'm not comfortable with that but what I can do? There is no work and it is too dangerous to go back,'' to Mogadishu, Hassan said Wednesday.
Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the World Food Program, said the situation has worsened since July and is "already an emergency.''
"Families cannot get the food they need either because they cannot afford it or because there isn't any where they are. They just have to stay where they are safe and hope they get assistance,'' Smerdon told The Associated Press.
Already, 1.5 million of Somalia's estimated 7 million people need food aid. Nearly 300,000 are at risk of starvation, aid workers say.
The hunger is at its most acute in the southern Somalia region of Shabelle region that has served as the country's breadbasket. Poor rains have yielded the worst harvest in 13 years, and an influx of 80,000 people fleeing Mogadishu has pushed up food prices beyond the reach of many locals.
Hundreds of thousands have left Mogadishu since December. They have been fleeing violence in the capital between Somali soldiers, their Ethiopian allies and insurgents believed to be remnants of a radical Islamic group called the Council of Islamic Courts that controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for six months.
The Ethiopian troops routed the Islamic fighters in December and the Islamic fighters vowed to fight an Iraq-style insurgency. Thousands of Somalis have died in the fighting this year.
"We are hearing a lot more gunfire, grenades and mortar fire ... on a daily basis for the last four or five weeks. Even anti-aircraft fire,'' said Colin McIlreavy, the head of one of the chapters of Medecins Sans Frontieres working in Somalia. McIlreavy was speaking in the capital of neighboring Kenya, Nairobi, where all aid agencies working in Somalia are based because of insecurity in the Horn of Africa nation.
McIlreavy's group operates a clinic near Mogadishu's main market. The violence and checkpoints in Mogadishu has often stopped patients reaching the clinic, he said.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other, pulling the Horn of Africa nation into years of violence and anarchy.
Source: AP, Sept 26, 2007