Relief reaches Somali Tsunami victims

[General Duke]

Relief reaches Somali Tsunami victims

- Friday, December 31, 2004 at 08:48

 

31 December 2004 09:22

 

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) on Thursday said it had started distributing food to Somali survivors of the deadly tsunami wave that struck the country's Indian Ocean coast at the weekend, as the death toll climbed to 132.

 

"WFP has started food distributions in the town of Hafun on the northern coast of Somalia," the agency's spokesperson Laura Melo said in a statement.

 

"Almost 500 families, surrounded by rubble and destruction, received an emergency ration of rice, maize, vegetable oil and beans, enough to get them through the next couple of days," Melo said.

 

Some other 100 families in Foar town, 60 kilometres west of the tsunami-devastated Hafun Island, also received food aid, WFP said, explaining that the distributed food is part of 83 tonnes of food stored in Foar.

 

Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi earlier said in an interview that Nairobi that 132 poeple had died.

 

"Some 132 people were killed and about 150 others injured," Gedi said.

 

"There are also more than 50 000 people displaced by the killer wave (and) the most affected region is in the regional administration of Puntland, but the damage was felt all along southern part of Somalia," Gedi said.

 

Puntland lies in the northeastern part of Somalia, a nation of 10-million people.

 

On Wednesday, the United Nations said at least 114 people had died and up to 50,000 people were in urgent need of relief assistance in the Horn of Africa nation, whose coastline was battered by walls of water on Sunday.

 

"Food, medicine, water and shelter are urgently needed for the displaced people," added Gedi in an interview, adding that urgent aid was needed in Barri, Mudug, Lower Shabelle, Middle Shabelle and Mogadishu regions, all lying along the country's coastline.

 

The quake-powered waves -- its epicentre was off the Indonesian island of Sumatra -- have killed more than 118 000 people across the Indian Ocean since Sunday, spreading havoc on the shorelines of several Asian nations where disease threatens to wipe out weakened survivors.

 

According to Melo, damage inflicted by the killer tidal waves varied along Somalia's Indian Ocean coastal areas.

 

She said the worst hit region lay in an 800-kilometre upper northeastern shoreline in Puntland and that it was too early to confirm the number of people affected. The northern region was where most deaths occurred.

 

"On the south coast, tidal waves were less aggressive and resulting damage was relatively small. Still, some fishing communities have experienced heavy losses in property," Melo said.

 

"Some people were reportedly injured in the Galgudud coastal areas. In a number of areas in the south, fishing boats were either swept away or sunk by violent waves, while makeshift dwellings were also destroyed," it added.

 

"Naturally, the livelihoods of those who lost their productive assets will be negatively affected and may need quick relief assistance," the agency said.

 

In northeastern Hafun island, the threat of disease has started to hit weakened survivors, whose possessions were ruined by the killer waves.

 

"They are now without shelter, water, food and medicine. Cases of diarrhoea and other diseases are already being reported," Melo said on Wednesday in a statement.

 

"Most of the houses in the town have been destroyed. Personal possessions lay scattered around the town. Boats are beached in the middle of the town. Even money is strewn on the ground," Melo added.

 

Somalia lacks an affective disaster-response mechanism, having been ravaged by anarchy since 1991 when dictator Mohammed Siad Barre was toppled, plunging the whole nation into lawlessness. -

 

Source: Sapa-AFP