Wednesday, July 08, 2009
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Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said Tuesday that the eight-week long offensive by al-Shabaab and Hizb-ul-Islam militias has triggered "the biggest exodus from the troubled Somali capital since the Ethiopian intervention in 2007".
Redmond added that in the past week alone, 105 people had been killed and 382 wounded, as violence reached the capital's neighborhoods -- once dubbed as "islands of peace".
According to the UN official, the escalating conflict in Mogadishu is having a "devastating impact on the city's population" and is forcing the closure of some of the Somali capital's few health centers.
"Many residents are fleeing their homes for the first time since the start of the Somali civil war in 1991," he said.
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According to the agency, the total number of internally displaced people in Somalia has surpassed 1.2 million, with more than 284,306 registered at refugee camps in northern Kenya alone -- even though the Kenyan border is already officially closed to asylum seekers. Others are heading for the Afgooye corridor, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Mogadishu -- where 400,000 victims from previous conflicts have already sought refuge.
Militia group al-Shabaab -- which now holds vast expanses of central Somalia as well as parts of the capital -- launched an unprecedented nationwide offensive against government forces in May, in an attempt to topple the leadership of the internationally backed President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed.
The group accuses the Somali official of "serving foreign interests".
The resulting hostility has brought about unbridled unrest throughout the country, which has weathered 18 years of violence.
Source: PressTV, July 8, 2009