World Food Programme (WFP) says it cannot reach more than two million Somalis facing starvation in the famine-struck country where Alshabab militants control much of the worst-hit areas.
WFP officials said they were considering food drops from aircraft into some areas controlled by the al Qaeda-linked Alshabab, which imposed a ban on food aid in 2010.
“There are 2.2 million people yet to be reached. It is the most dangerous environment we are working in the world. But people are dying. It’s not about politics, it’s about saving lives now,” Josette Sheeran, WFP’s executive director, told agency staff and reporters in northeastern Kenya.
Sheeran said WFP will start airlifts within days into Mogadishu to get vital supplies of special nutritious foods for the malnourished children who so desperately need it.
“The situation in Somalia is critical,” she said and added at one of our feeding sites in Mogadishu, where we are supplying food for hot meals, “I met a woman who had lost children as they trekked out of the famine area in search of food.”
The UN, however, says $300 million is needed over the next two months and $1.6 billion to sustain programs beyond that.
But Alshabab says the U.N. declaration of a famine is simply “propaganda.”
Alshabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage on Thursday accused the U.N. of exaggerating the crisis for political reasons. He said Alshabab will allow increased aid only from foreign agencies currently working in its strongholds, not from organizations it has banned. But he did not specify which organizations.
CEF, the UN agency that focuses on children, child malnutrition rates in southern Somalia have doubled in a single month – in some places to 55 per cent, and infant deaths have increased to six per day.
Some 3.7 million children in Somalia are facing starvation, the agency says, with another 6.3 million in other countries in the Horn of Africa affected by hunger.
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Monday, July 25, 2011
WFP considering food to be dropped for starving Somalis
Posted by The Review at Monday, July 25, 2011
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