afrol News, 24 July - Somali's new opposition leader, Mr Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys has vowed to protect aid workers in troubled African state today. Somali has been plagued by a series of kidnappings, attacks and killings of both local and international aid workers in recent weeks.

Alliance for Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) leader Mr Aweys, condemned attacks saying he is grateful to the aid workers who are helping starving Somali communities.

"We shall do what we can to safeguard aid workers, especially in areas under our control. We shall help, escort and defend them. They are killed by the enemies who put the blame on us," he said.

Mr Aweys, who is on United States and UN terrorism lists and replaced Mr Sheikh Sharif Ahmed as head of the Eritrea-based opposition alliance, called for a halt to killing and abduction of aid workers in Somalia.

ARS has accused Mr Ahmed along with 36 other ARS members expelled from the group for signing a deal in Djibouti last month with Somalia's interim government that set a timetable for Ethiopia's withdrawal and deployment of UN peacekeepers which was rejected by majority of ARS.

According to UN 19 aid workers have been killed in Somalia this year while 13 others have been abducted, and this has forced aid workers scale down their distribution in remote Somali where millions are starving.

World Food Program (WFP) warned that violence in Somalia threatens to wreck all efforts to resolve a humanitarian emergency that could soon rival the country's famine in the early 1990s.

Somalia's last severe famine was from 1991 to 1993, which swept through the nation, devastating crops, killing between 240,000 and 280,000 people and displacing up to 2 million, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

UN envoy to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, told UN Security Council there was an urgency to implement the Djibouti accord, which among others instructed Ethiopia troops to leave Sudan.

"The agreement will not bring peace overnight, no agreement has ever done so. In all peace processes some individuals or groups always set out by rejecting agreements. An effective implementation of agreement should be an incentive to bring more Somalis on board," he said.

United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia expressed grave concern at the rapidly deteriorating security situation in the country after two Somali aid workers were killed last week.

UN agency said it needed to double the amount of food assistance in Somalia over the rest of the year to feed an average of 2.4 million people per month.

Somalia has lacked an effective government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. At least a million people have been uprooted by violence since early last year when Ethiopian and Somali government troops ousted Mr Aweys's Islamic Courts movement from Mogadishu in early 2007.

By staff writer

© afrol News

Related pages and feature

Current afrol News Top Stories