MOGADISHU – At least 10 Somalis, among them refugees, were killed yesterday during a firefight that broke out in Mogadishu when troops and residents looted truckloads of food meant for famine victims, witnesses said.
Government troops had opened fire and unloaded food aid on to wheelbarrows and minibuses while residents carried off sackloads of food on their shoulders shortly after a local aid organisation began distributing food to thousands of Somali refugees.
The incident highlights the dangers facing aid groups struggling to operate in an anarchic country hit by years of drought and a never-ending cycle of violence.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP), which said 290 tonnes of maize and oil had been available for distribution at the site, confirmed that an incident had occurred at Badbaado, a squalid makeshift camp home to some 30,000 refugees.
“At least 10 people died and 15 others were wounded,” refugee Aden Kusow said, speaking from the camp. “Seven of those died in the camp. The other three died outside as they fled. Most of those who died are refugees.”
Earlier, another witness said he saw one dead soldier as he fled the camp with his three children when the shooting started.
“I’m lucky that my family is safe. I do not know where I’m heading to. I’m running for my life,” Aliyow Hussein (40) said on a street outside the camp.
Some 3.7 million Somalis are at risk of starvation, the majority of them in the south, prompting hundreds of thousands to make the dangerous trek to Mogadishu and its outlying areas in search of food.
About 100,000 refugees have reached the capital in the past two months and hundreds more are streaming into the city every day, risking threats of attack by Islamist al-Shabab militants who control most of the worst-hit drought areas.
Newly appointed Somali prime minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali said his administration would work to prevent a repeat of the violence. “We shall take measures against those who were behind the chaos,” he said during a visit to the camp.
But amid conflicting reports on who was responsible for the violence, it was hard to see how government troops – who are fighting to wrest control of the capital from al-Shabab militants and who have at times even fought each other in years of civil war – could bring the perpetrators to justice.
Sacdia Kassim, a Somali aid worker working for a local charity in partnership with the WFP, said looting was becoming a common occurrence in Mogadishu.
“We often witness government forces and residents looting food for displaced people,” Ms Kassim said.
“We knew those trucks of food would be looted one day. They were mouth-watering for the government militia. Unfortunately, I saw fleeing refugees and others running away with the aid food on my way to the camp.”
WFP spokesman David Orr said food distribution at Badbaado had begun some time after 6am and carried on smoothly for about two hours.
“By all accounts, it got out of hand. It got a bit chaotic and looting of the food started,” he said. “It seems that all the remainder was lost.”
WFP has said aid groups cannot reach more than two million Somalis in the worst-hit areas because al-Shabab fighters have blocked access to most aid agencies.
The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, said it would fly more than 31 tonnes of shelter material and aid items into Mogadishu on Monday, its first humanitarian airlift into Somalia in more than five years.
Stolen aid often ends up for sale in markets or in the hands of militants. “Government forces started the game and we pop in where there is an unexpected chance. I will sell half of this food to get some cash. It is not a surprise,” said Mogadishu resident Hashim Ibrahim (30). – (Reuters)