- Number of people who have been displaced by violence in Somalia has gone up to over 1 million with renewed fighting causing fear of terror and insecurity amonsgt civilians.
More than 35,000 people are reported to fled their homes after renewed fighting in Mogadishu last month, United Nations humanitarian wing announced today.
Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) attributed mass exodus from Somali capital in September to insecurity stemming from fighting, which also resulted in many civilian casualties.
Fresh fighting errupted in September between various anti-government groups and forces with Transitional Federal Government (TFG), Ethiopia and UN-backed African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM), threatening the heart of a peace deal negotiation.
Reports have further said that since exodus, some over 1,000 cases of diarrhoea have also claimed dozens of lives, and World Health Organisation (WHO) and its partners have had to step up deliveries of medicines and other supplies.
UN agencies reported that voilence evicted communities have limited access to sanitation facilities, and that many regions of Somalia face water shortages. "Water is being trucked in for drought-stricken areas in the country’s central region and there has only been sporadic rainfall," OCHA said.
Groups have said that fighting continues to impede humanitarian operations, with UN flights into Mogadishu having been suspended following a ban by an Islamist insurgency group last month.
In spite of this, the WFP and other aid agencies have been able to feed almost 2 million people, report said.
Earlier this week, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplored recent killing of aid workers in Somalia, where two local staff members of UN agencies were murdered since Friday.
Coupled with difficulties to shipping food aid into Somalia because of surging piracy as well as inland aid-bunkig by criminal elements, country has been dubbed one of the world most critical crisis areas, with international community called on to help bring normalty to avoid a deeper humanitarian crisis.
Somalia is in the grip of a deepening humanitarian crisis, brought on by conflict, successive failed or poor harvests, and hyperinflation. Recent assessments indicate critical rates of malnutrition throughout south central Somalia and among internally displaced populations in North. WFP has said that median rate of acute malnutrition in 20 surveys conducted this year has been found to be more than 18 per cent - which is already well above 15 percent emergency threshold.
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