Hunger threat to homeless Somali families

Without enough food, millions of Somalis hit by war or drought are fighting for survival.

Finding enough to eat is a daily battle for the one and a half million Somalis, mostly women and children, who have fled their homes and are now struggling to survive under extremely difficult circumstances.

A deadly combination of crop failures, years of not enough rain, conflicts and political turmoil now threaten 20 million people across the whole of East Africa with severe hunger, according to aid agency estimates.

In Somalia, where recent fighting between Islamist rebels and Somali government forces backed by African Union peacekeepers has claimed the lives of 2,000 people, half the population already needs food assistance and one in five children are severely malnourished.

But as the humanitarian situation gets worse, fierce fighting in the capital, Mogadishu, is now sending a fresh wave of refugees fleeing.

Grandmother Hassna Qassim, 58, looks after her five grandchildren in a hut in a camp for homeless Somalis in Jowhar, 50 miles north Mogadishu. When her daughter abandoned the children a year ago, Qassim took on caring for them. Her oldest grandchild is eight and the youngest is 18 months old, but to look for work in order to feed them, she has to leave them alone with the eight-year-old in charge for hours every day.

"We used to live in Shiirkole area (south Mogadishu) but when the Ethiopians (soldiers deployed in the country to assist the federal government) came, it became one of the most dangerous places in Mogadishu; there was fighting every day. It became impossible to stay,” she told the United Nations news service.

"I don’t like leaving them but I have no choice if I am to find food for us. I either leave them and look for work or we starve.

"I go to town every day. Sometimes I wash people's clothes. If I can't find any work, I collect grass and sell it to livestock owners.

"Most days I find enough for the night's meal. I cannot remember the last time we had more than one meal a day.

"But there are nights when I put the children to sleep with nothing."

UNICEF recently estimated that 70,000 of the 250,000 Somali children under the age of five who are living in crude refugee camps in south-central Somalia are at risk of death.