DPA
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Nairobi/Mogadishu (dpa) - The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) called for a donation of 19.5 million dollars Tuesday to safeguard war-weary Somalis from an expected crop failure. The United Nations' Food Security Analysis Unit warned last month that the southern and central parts of the Horn of Africa country could face a crop failure due to poor rainfall and with ongoing violence in the capital Mogadishu, WFP warned an increase in food aid is critical.
The UN's food agency said the 19.5 million dollars would feed one million people by the end of the year.
WFP and the International Maritime Organization called this month for concerted action against increasing piracy off Somalia's shores which is hindering the delivery of food aid to Somalis.
Meanwhile, attacks continued to plague the volatile capital Tuesday, with local reports saying several people had been killed in Mogadishu's central Bakara market in two days of bloodletting.
The violence came ahead of the resumption Thursday of an EU-backed reconciliation conference seen as the last best hope to bring peace to the anarchic country.
Suicide bombings, mortar shelling and assassination attempts have for the past six months convulsed Mogadishu, which has not known peace since the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre by warlords who then turned on each other.
The transitional government - the 14th attempt at cementing effective central rule in the country - blames the violence on remnants of an ousted Islamist group that controlled much of south- central Somalia for the last half of 2006.
The reconciliation conference, which opened Sunday and was expected to draw some 1,000 delegates, was adjourned shortly after it began as mortar shells pounded the capital.
Source: dpa, July 17, 2007