WUNRN
SOMALIA - CRITICAL FAMINE ISSUES -
AID ACCESS AT RISK
HUMANITARIAN DISASTER - WOMEN &
CHILDREN
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SOMALIA - DISPLACED FAMILIES
PARTICIPATE IN PROTEST OUTSIDE CAMP NEAR SOMALIA'S CAPITAL, MOGADISHU
15 Jul 2008
Source: Reuters
Displaced
families participate in a protest outside their camp near
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UN WARNS SOMALI CRISIS COULD RIVAL
1992-1993 FAMINE
15 July 2008
Source: Reuters
By
Daniel Wallis
NAIROBI,
July 15 (Reuters) - The killing and kidnapping of aid workers in Somalia
threatens to wreck all attempts to resolve a humanitarian disaster that could
soon rival its famine in the early 1990s, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.
Most
aid agencies are discussing suspending their operations in areas hit by
mounting insecurity and a wave of assassinations that has targeted senior local
humanitarian workers.
Relief
is still getting through, but the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said the
surge in violence was threatening the entire humanitarian response to the
emergency.
"If
we or our partners cannot operate on the ground because they are being shot or
kidnapped then assistance will not be distributed," WFP spokesman Peter
Smerdon told Reuters.
"If
sufficient assistance cannot be delivered ... in the coming months, parts of
southern and central Somalia could well be gripped by a disaster similar to the
1992-1993 famine."
Hundreds
of thousands died then.
Since
the start of last year, more than 8,000 civilians have been killed in fighting
after Ethiopian troops helped the interim government drive an Islamist movement
out of Mogadishu.
One
million Somalis have been forced from their homes by the latest bloodshed, and
their dire situation is worsened by banditry, drought, high food and fuel
prices and inflation.
The
latest victim was an employee with a trucking company working for WFP who was
killed on Sunday by militiamen manning a checkpoint near the southern town of
Buale. That was the fifth such murder this year of WFP-contracted transport
workers.
Four
foreign aid workers -- two Italians, a Kenyan and a Briton -- are being held
hostage in the Horn of Africa nation.
DEATH
THREATS
But
it is the recent assassinations of senior local aid officials, combined with
the appearance of threatening leaflets, that have stoked fears to even higher
levels.
On
Friday, men armed with pistols shot dead the deputy head of a German charity
and another local man working for a WFP partner group. A week earlier, gunmen
had killed the local head of the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) in a similar
attack.
Suspicion
for the killings and kidnappings usually falls on the al-Shabaab, Islamist
rebels waging an Iraq-style insurgency against the government and its Ethiopian
allies.
But
there is confusion over the identities of those behind the recent murders.
Leaflets circulated in the Shibis area of the capital last week threatened
local aid workers with death if they did not publicly resign from the jobs.
Although
supposedly from an insurgent group, they used no Islamist phrases. The leaflets
mentioned the army of al-Zarqawi, which has not been seen in any Shabaab
messages.
The
Islamists have accused government hardliners of ordering the latest killings to
spur the international community into sending a robust peacekeeping force to
help it stay in power.
Somali
officials hotly deny that.
On
Sunday, a group of Somalis in the diaspora told Somali media that their
investigations showed the intelligence services of unnamed east African nations
were behind the murders.
Others
say members of an ultra-hardline regional Islamist group carried out the
assassinations, but fear to name it in interviews. Last month, an al Qaeda
leader issued a video on the Internet urging Somalia's insurgents to fight on.
With
little reliable information, Somalis in Mogadishu say anxiety is rising fast.
Revenge killings are on the increase, and conspiracy theories abound -- making
the likelihood of any quick resumption of aid operations all the more remote.