Friday, January 01, 2010
The governor Sheikh Mohamed Abdullahi said that the 300 sacks of maize and beans were confiscated from a WFP-owned warehouse in the city of Merka where he said they became dirty after many years of storage.
“The vulnerable people in the region have been very much in need and the WFP has been keeping the food here for so many years and they now want to distribute it to our people after it had expired. That is something we cannot allow so we have burned it in front of the public,” the militant’s governor stated.
“Our intelligence services got the information that the WFP was about to distribute the dirty food to the people so we have intercepted it before they would hand out this expired food to our people,” he added.
He said that the Mujahideens also burned packages of expired medicines taken from pharmacies and stores belonging to some unspecified aid agencies in Merka.
The burning comes as the militants had already prohibited the United Nations and other international aid agencies from operating in Somalia especially in areas under their control while millions of Somalis are currently in need of emergency food assistance.
Source: APA