Xudeedi Posted March 30, 2008 Hard to believe in what is still happening in Somalia. People are being starved while spy planes drone over our cities and coast. ---------------------- MOGADISHU, March 28 (Reuters) - Somalis uprooted by fighting in Mogadishu looted trucks carrying U.N. food aid on Friday, peacekeepers said, highlighting what relief agencies warn is a fast deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe. Somalia now has 1 million internal refugees, aid workers say, and their numbers increase by an exodus of some 20,000 civilians each month from the capital, where Islamist insurgents are battling the Ethiopian-backed government. Captain Clement Cimana, spokesman for a small African Union peacekeeping force in the coastal city, said the displaced residents targeted trucks carrying supplies for the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) before local police restored order. "They also blocked the main road, showing their anger," he told Reuters. "They said they always see WFP-chartered trucks full of food passing in front of them while they are hungry." A WFP spokesman in Somalia said relatively small amounts of sorghum and vegetable oil had been stolen, but that almost all the food had subsequently been recovered. Aid agencies say record high food prices, hyper-inflation and drought across the country are exacerbating the crisis and will worsen if seasonal rains due next month fail as expected. Meanwhile, police and witnesses in Merka, south of Mogadishu, said a small unmanned plane had crashed near the coast. Local media speculated it was a U.S. surveillance drone controlled from a warship in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. military has launched several air strikes in Somalia in recent months, targeting al Qaeda suspects including the bombers of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. A Somali jihadist group calling itself the Young Mujahideen Movement issued a Web message on Friday referring to a U.S. spy plane that "fell in the city of Merka" and threatening the United States, according to the SITE Institute, a U.S.-based monitoring service. "We are preparing for America ... what will make them forget the blessed attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam," the SITE Institute translation, monitored in London, said. It said the message was distributed by the Global Islamic Media Front. REFUGEE CRISIS Remnants of a hardline Islamist administration that was driven from Mogadishu in late 2006 are blamed for an Iraq-style insurgency of assassinations and roadside bombings that killed 6,500 people last year in Somalia's capital alone. Residents said a civilian was killed on Friday and several wounded when Ethiopian troops opened fire at a bus that had a gunman aboard. "The soldiers shot to stop the vehicle," witness Mohamed Omar told Reuters. "One passenger was armed with a pistol and fired at them. ... As a result, they shot directly at the bus." The violence, including attacks on humanitarian workers, has limited access to victims, 40 aid agencies said this week. The agencies said the 250,000 civilians camped between Mogadishu and Afgoye to the west are now considered the biggest group of internally displaced people in the world. Rising numbers of Somali refugees are also seeking asylum in neighbouring countries, the U.N. refugee agency said. Since the start of this year, 15,000 Somalis have sought asylum in Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and eastern Sudan, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement. In neighbouring Kenya, donors held a meeting convened by the United Nations and World Bank to discuss the Somali economy. Somalia's Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein said his government would read its first budget in less than a month. (Additional reporting by Ibrahim Mohamed in Baidoa, Jonathan Lynn in Geneva and Helen Nyambura-Mwaura in Nairobi; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Alison Williams) (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/ ) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
