Sunday, June 15, 2008
"Nobody slept in the camps overnight, all the makeshifts are devastated and so far two children have died," Hassan Ali Hirsi, a traditional chief in Elisha, 18 kilometres (11 miles) south of the capital Mogadishu, told AFP.
He said that children had less bodily resistance to such heavy rain.
The tents used by displaced people in camps are generally flimsy structures put together from plastic, boxes or old clothes, offering little shelter from the elements.
Another traditional chief in the area, Madey Kulo told AFP that seven children had been taken to hospital suffering from hypothermia and breathing difficulties and warned that the death toll could rise if people in the camps do not receive help soon.
More than a quarter of a million displaced people live in precarious conditions in the camps surrounding Afgoye, 30 kilometres (18 miles) west of Mogadishu.
Somalia, the poorest country in the Horn of Africa, riven by civil war since 1991, has more than a million internally displaced people according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Currently 2.5 million Somalis, around 35 percent of the population, depend on humanitarian aid. That figure is likely to rise to almost half the population by the end of the year if the current conflict between Islamic insurgents and Somali government forces, backed by Ethiopian troops, does not abate, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned recently.
Around 6,500 civilians have been killed in the conflict since the beginning of 2007, according to OCHA.
Source: AFP, June 15, 2008