Somali refugees caught between famine and civil war appealed to international aid organizations to ramp up the distribution of emergency relief supplies that has been jeopardised by heavy fighting in the capital Mogadishu. Hundreds of drought-hit Somalis are streaming into squalid camps in and around the rubble-strewn city every day, defying the orders of militants who control much of the worst-hit areas to stay put, only to walk into a war zone. The start of Ramadan coincided with a jump in suicide attack threats made by Al-Shabab movement, which has waged an insurgency against a government it sees as a puppet of the West. UN staff in Mogadishu said they had for the moment been restricted from moving outside the heavily guarded airport perimeter and so have had to rely on locals to deliver urgently needed food and shelter.
About 400,000 Somali refugees – almost 5 percent of the country’s entire population – are camped out in Mogadishu and its outlying areas. Up to 100,000 refugees arrived in June and July alone, the United Nations says. Drought, conflict and a lack of food aid have left 3.6 million people at risk of starvation in southern Somalia. The drought, the worst in decades, has affected about 12 million people across the Horn of Africa.