Somalia violence scaring returnees’

Published: Thursday, 2 August, 2007, 02:01 AM Doha Time

MOGADISHU: Unceasing violence in Mogadishu is stopping thousands of people who fled fighting in Somalia’s capital earlier this year from venturing home, a senior UN official said yesterday.
Eric Laroche, the UN resident aid co-ordinator, spoke after touring squalid camps housing some of the 250,000 people thought to be sheltering on the outskirts of the city, which saw its worst battles for two decades in March and April.
“Many say they cannot return to Mogadishu,” he told reporters. “They don’t even feel secure on the roads to Mogadishu. What we can do is to improve their conditions. Now that we met them we are certainly able to help.” The Somali capital has been plagued by violence since January when the interim government, backed by Ethiopian troops, drove out an Islamist movement that ruled much of the south for six months last year.
Remnants of the Islamist movement are now blamed for an Iraq-style insurgency of roadside bombs, suicide blasts and assassinations targeting government staff, Somali and Ethiopian troops and African Union (AU) peacekeepers from Uganda. “What we need to do is to mobilise all our forces and money. “We are sorry we have not been able to help these people,” Laroche said, after touring several camps made up mostly of poor shacks built from sticks, rags and scraps of plastic sheeting.
Because of the threat of attack, he and other UN officials made the trip in an armoured AU car and bullet-proof jackets. Guillermo Bettocchi, a representative of the UN refugee agency UNCHR said much needed to be done before displaced residents could begin returning home. “We are here to identify the needs of these people and what we can do,” he said, surrounded by dozens of curious children. “They need basic items like shelters, sanitation, food and clean drinking water.”
Speaking to Bettocchi through a local interpreter, one 70-year-old woman said she had arrived at the camp on Tuesday with her six-year-old grandson. “I ran away from bullets and bombs,” said the woman, who declined to be named. “I plan to stay here until Mogadishu becomes safe and until the Ethiopian troops leave the city.” – Reuters