SOMALIA: At least 80 killed in Somalia fighting: UN
Posted by warvictims on October 3, 2008
by AFP
GENEVA (AFP) — At least 80 civilians were killed and more than 100 others injured in violence in the Somalian capital Mogadishu in the last week of September, the United Nations said on Friday.
Some 110 people have been admitted to two main hospitals in Mogadishu, but “the number of those wounded is suspected to be higher,” said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
About 15,000 people have also been displaced following the fighting, some fleeing to safer districts in the city, while others fled to the Afgooye corridor where already 300,000 internally displaced people have sought refuge.
OCHA had appealed for 646 million dollars to help 3.2 million people or 43 percent of Somalia’s population, which is in “dire need of humanitarian assistance”. But Byrs said that the fund is still short of 231 million dollars.
The UN refugee agency had earlier described the fighting in Mogadishu as the “most violent since February 2007″, shortly after the toppling of hardline Islamists.
It estimates that 700,000 people fled the capital last year, and another 160,000 have left since the start of the year.
Somalia has had no effective government since the 1991 ouster of Siad Barre touched off a bloody power struggle that has defied numerous attempts to restore stability.
Source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g7StlTh9i6yHF8HF1okp64QF2vaA
