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Somalis loot food
aid trucks
29/03/2008 13:18 - (SA)
Mogadishu - Somalis uprooted by fighting
in Mogadishu looted trucks carrying
United Nations food aid on Friday,
peacekeepers said, highlighting what
relief agencies warned was a fast
deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe.
Somalia now has one 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 were
battling the Ethiopian-backed
government.
Captain Clement Cimana, spokesperson for
a small African Union peacekeeping force
in the coastal city, said the displaced
residents targeted trucks carrying
supplies for the UN 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."
Small plane crashes
A WFP spokesperson 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 said record high food
prices, hyper-inflation and drought
across the country were exacerbating the
crisis and would worsen if seasonal
rains due next month failed 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
United States surveillance drone
controlled from a warship in the Indian
Ocean.
The US military had launched several air
strikes in Somalia in recent months,
targeting al-Qaeda suspects including
the bombers of the US embassies in Kenya
and Tanzania in 1998.
'We are preparing for America'
A Somali jihadist group calling itself
the Young Mujahideen Movement issued a
Web message on Friday referring to a US
spy plane that "fell in the city of
Merka" and threatening the US, according
to the SITE Institute, a US-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.
Remnants of a hardline Islamist
administration that was driven from
Mogadishu in late 2006 were 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 after
Ethiopian troops opened fire at a bus
that had a gunman aboard.
"The soldiers shot to stop the vehicle,"
witness Mohamed Omar said. "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, had limited access
to victims, 40 aid agencies said this
week.
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