Ongoing violence in Somali capital alarms UN aid agencies

Fighting continues to wrack the Somali capital with another 17,000 residents displaced in just the past two months, United Nations humanitarian agencies reported today, voicing concern that children are particularly suffering from the ongoing violence.

A quarter of the nearly 1400 casualties recorded by three of the main hospitals in Mogadishu between late March and late last month were children under the age of five, UN World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson Paul Garwood told journalists in Geneva.

Many of the other casualties are women, and at least 31 people have died from their injuries, Mr. Garwood said.

“The fact that children account for so many of the weapon-related injuries remains a key concern,” he added.

Somalia has not had a functioning national government in two decades and the current Transitional Federal Government (TFG) is involved in fighting with Islamist rebels and related insurgent groups. Mogadishu, the capital, remains one of the areas hardest hit by the violence.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that an estimated 17,100 residents have been displaced since the start of April. About 6,900 have fled the city entirely while the other 10,200 have moved to relatively calmer neighbourhoods.

The continued fighting has led to outbreaks of cholera and acute watery diarrhoea, and Mr. Garwood said WHO was working with partner organizations to try to control the outbreaks through the use of medicines. The agency is also training local surgeons in trauma care.

Last month Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an international conference on Somalia, held in the Turkish city of Istanbul, that the international community must act quickly to end the crisis in the Horn of Africa nation or the violence may expand to the country’s neighbours and beyond.