War in the Horn

"Africa"

04/26/2007

Apr 26th 2007 | ADDIS ABABA | From Economist.com

AFP

THE UN says that at least 340,000 Somalis have fled their capital, Mogadishu, in the recent weeks of fighting there. Thousands more are trapped along the frontlines inside the city, under fire, packed in with rotting corpses, and unable to find a way out. At least 1,300 have been killed so far this month, most of them civilians. Ethiopian artillery has demolished chunks of the already rubble-strewn city. On Thursday April 26th, after the heaviest fighting yet, Somalia’s prime minister, Mohamed Ghedi, said that an Islamist-inspired insurgency is almost squashed. The reality may be rather different.

The Somali transitional government, backed by Ethiopia, says it is in a do-or-die struggle with al-Qaeda. A few more days of shelling, it says, and it will have the upper hand. But the insurgents are getting stronger, striking with machinegunners, snipers and suicide-bombers, then melting back into their communities. A contingent of 1,000-plus Ugandan peacekeepers under African Union command has remained impotently confined to barracks.

Most of the displaced civilians are encamped on Mogadishu’s outskirts, where the scenes are medieval. People lack water, food and shelter. Cholera has broken out. The sick sometimes have to pay rent even to sit in the shade of trees. Things will get worse with the rains, which have started. Aid agencies say people will soon start dying in large numbers. Some reckon Somalia is facing its biggest humanitarian crisis, worse than in the early 1990s, when the state collapsed amid famine and slaughter.

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