Post date: Aug 13, 2011 9:10:12 PM
Valerie Amos, the United Nations Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordination (OCHA), visiting a hospital in Mogadishu and was shocked at the state of the malnourished children.
MOGADISHU, SOMALIA (AUGUST 13, 2011) REUTERS - Somalia called on Saturday for the creation of a humanitarian force to protect food aid convoys and camps in the famine-hit Horn of Africa country.
Islamist rebels mostly retreated from the capital Mogadishu last weekend but the threat of guerrilla-style attacks such as suicide bombings remains despite their battlefield defeat.
The government and a 9,000-strong African peacekeeping force admit they do not control all of the capital even after the rebel withdrawal, placing thousands of Somali refugees who are streaming into Mogadishu searching for food in danger.
The pullout by the al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab insurgents has raised hopes that humanitarian groups will be able to step up aid deliveries after years of obstruction by the militant group.
Somali Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali held a joint news conference with Valerie Amos, U.N. emergency relief coordinator, visiting the capital.
"We met today with Valerie Amos ... we have discussed the current humanitarian situation in Somalia and the best way that we can assist with humanitarian aid to the people," Ali said. "We have also raised the issue of creating a special humanitarian force, which has dual purposes. First to secure and protect the food aid convoy, and to protect the camps and stabilise the city and fight banditry and looting."
Earlier this month, government troops fired shots and fought among themselves as some looted food meant for famine victims provided by the World Food Programme at the Badbaado camp near the city.
Ali did not say who would make up such a force.
On Saturday, Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the AMISOM peacekeeping force that backs Somali's beleaguered government, told Reuters Uganda would soon send an additional 2,000 of its soldiers to bolster security in the capital.
nkunda said AMISOM has been waiting for the deployment of 3,000 more troops promised since last June. Uganda has pledged additional troops, as long as other nations paid for the soldiers to be deployed in Somalia.
The United Nations has authorised a limit of 12,000 troops for now.
"The Ugandan president made the pledge and 2,000 Ugandan troops will come as soon as logistics allow," Ankunda said. "This is part of the long awaited deployment of 3,000 troops. I do not know any other country that is sending troops at the moment so far."
Somali police and the African Union troops said they had discovered 137 artillery shells in a disused house in the capital and destroyed them.
"The extremists were storing up large stocks of munitions in order to make improvised bombs to launch a campaign of terror in Mogadishu," Ankunda said in a statement. "Large areas of the city have to be cleared of these types of weapons stores and secured in the longer term so that the
city can return to some semblance of normality and to do this we need more troops."
Amos called for improved security for food convoys, and said she was shocked at the conditions after touring a hospital and meeting Somalis who had walked long distances to find food.
"I visited Banadir Hospital and the things that I saw there will stay with me for the rest of my life. Children who are so malnourished they can barely lift their heads, suffering from skin diseases resulting from the fact that their bodies have grown and extended and then gone back to normal," she said.
A cholera epidemic is spreading in the country, especially among people driven to the capital by a lack of food and water.
About 3.6 million people in Somalia are at risk of starvation. Some 12.4 million people in the Horn of Africa -- including Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti -- are affected by the worst drought in decades, according to the United Nations.
Tens of thousands of people have already died.