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| International |
| 10,000 Somalis fled to Kenya last month |
| 2002-05-15 |
| Some 10,000 Somali civilians, mostly women and children, have fled fighting in their country to Kenya over the last month, the UN refugee agency said on Monday. UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Jonathon Clayton told AFP that the refugees were now in the border town of Mandera. Somalis first began pouring into Mandera on April 11 and their numbers have since been growing on a daily basis. "We thought that the skirmishes in April were localised and would end after a ceasefire but the hostilities continued unabated and the refugees might stay here for a while," said Clayton. The fighting in Somalia's Gedo region, bordering Ethiopia and Somalia, involves rival factions of the Somali National Front. Some groups within the SNF support a transitional government set up in Mogadishu in August 2000, while other SNF elements back an alliance of warlords opposed to the regime, which has yet to make its mark far beyond the capital. Under normal circumstances, Somali refugees in Kenya are accommodated in well-established camps already housing about 144,000 Somalis, but heavy rains have made it impractical to transport the most recent arrivals to the centres. Too bad they can't shift some of those heavy rains to cover the drought in Zim. We're sure those guys'll let us know when they're done. Kind of obviates us having to go tromping around there looking for al-Qaeda if they're all going to kill each other anyway. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |