Rescue workers in dinghies and boats have reached more than 10,000 flood-stricken Somalis stranded on remote fingers of dry land, aid officials said yesterday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had helped the stranded flood victims in the past three days - including one group which has huddled for the past 18 days on a dike 500 metres wide and 2 km long.
An ICRC spokesman, Mr Josue Anselmo, said a further 300 families who deserted a flooded leper colony west of Jilib had also been reached and given food and shelter.
Vast areas of southern and central Somalia have been flooded in the past month by heavy rains caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon.
The floods have so far claimed more than 1,300 lives, destroyed tens of thousands of hectares of croplands and ruined foodstocks which Somalis traditionally store underground. More than a quarter of a million people have been made homeless, agencies say.
The worst areas of flooding are along and between the Shabelle and Juba rivers, which flow south from the Ethiopian border towards Kismayo on the southern coast.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said yesterday it had recruited 20 local boat owners and their vessels to help distribute relief supplies and also rescue stranded Somalis from spits of dry land in the interior.
Somalia has descended into chaos since the overthrow of the military dictator, Gen Mohamed Siad Barre, in 1991 and has since been without central government.
In another development, a spokesman for the Rahanwein Resistance Army warned yesterday that workers in Somalia may come under attack if they let themselves be escorted by gunmen of the warlord, Gen Hussein Mohamed Aidid.
"We will not take responsibility for any damage that occurs," a spokesman, Mr Mohamed Aden Qalinle, said in Mogadishu.
"Humanitarian groups must demonstrate neutrality and distance themselves from both warring factions."
Mr Qalinle added that the only way of identifying some landmines planted by both sides was by stepping on them, but said: "We shall instruct our fighters to de-mine roads used by relief agencies."
He also warned the aid agencies not to give relief supplies to "lopsided" local humanitarian organisations, without specifying them.
Relief agencies working in Somalia employ their own gunmen for protection in a country where kidnappings are common, but try to ensure they come from the appropriate clan. They are often also escorted by militiamen loyal to a local strongman.
The Rahanwein and Gen Aidid's Habr Gedir militiamen are battling for control of the southern town of Baidoa.
They fought there on Monday and Tuesday of last week, leaving at least 10 dead and 16 wounded as the water rose and a new stream started flowing into the town.
Two French military helicopters were deployed on Sunday in eastern Ethiopia to help flood victims there, but four helicopters being hired by relief agencies for use in Somalia, which had originally been due to arrive in Nairobi in the middle of last week, had still not arrived yesterday.
Relief officials were reluctant to discuss the reasons for the delay, but observers said many armies and companies were unwilling to risk their helicopters in Somalia, where warlords have ruled since 1991.
The confirmed death toll in Somalia since the Juba burst its banks on October 18th has reached 1,378, according to an inter-agency report yesterday.
At least 230,000 Somalis have fled their villages to shelter on small patches of high ground in the southern river valleys, where they are competing for dry land with hyenas, crocodiles and snakes.
In Uganda, deaths in the east of the country rose to 35 as a result of flooding in the Mbale district, a district police commander said.
Local people told the police chief that floods usually hit the area on a 33-year cycle, and they had calculated that the next round of bad weather would hit in 1999.
In Kenya the flooding death toll has reached 49, a police spokesman said.