First aid reaches villagers stranded by cyclone in remote north-west of Somaliland

[Deeq A.]

 

Around 8,000 families stranded in remote villages west of Lughaya received their first aid yesterday since tropical cyclone Sagar ripped through Awdal region in Somaliland on 19 May.

The commissioner of Lughaya, Abdullahi Ali Awnuur, said the authorities received 144 tons of aid including food and plastic shelters. Six trucks that brought the items from Borame have been navigating the flooded roads to Lughaya for 11 days since the cyclone.

Thousands more families, however, are still stranded along the Awdal coast as drivers could not embark on hazardous routes to deliver aid to them.  Those still cut off are communities in Ido-Adays, Hadayta, Abdigeedi, Hulka, Riiga-kaluule, Gara’a, Laanawaale, Karuure, Beeyo-Aadaded, Teeb, and Damasha villages.

The destruction of roads has brought transport and economic activities to a standstill.

“It is hard to find the road among the floods and debris. The whole area has become deep ravines scattered with rocks and trees that have been moved by the cyclone,” said Idris Dahir Absiye, a driver set to deliver relief aid to affected families in Lughaya.

Some trucks carrying aid overturned along Borame-Lughaya road.

Those who have not received any help are fast running out of food and have no proper shelter or clean water. Many are camping in the open after their houses were destroyed. There are many drought-displaced pastoralists living in the area who are already vulnerable.

Mohamed Jama Diiriye, an elder from the stranded Gara’a village told Radio Ergo by phone that 200 families there were in dire need of food, water and shelter. He said they were eating food that had been delivered before the cyclone hit by the UN’s World Food Programme.  They have been drying the sorghum that was soaked by the rain and then cooking it.

Radio Ergo