Thousands more ready to flee flood-soaked Somalia

Hundreds of thousands more Somalis are on the brink of fleeing their country, where floods have worsened already desperate humanitarian conditions, the United Nations warned today. This month alone, flooding has forced 16,000 more people from their homes in the Horn of African country where about 1.5 million have been uprooted since the start of 2007.

Now 3.6 million Somalis need international aid, compared with 1.8 million last year, and without a quick injection of foreign aid, the country's increasingly desperate people would try to escape abroad, the organisation warned. "In the worst of scenarios, we could imagine that 283,000 could leave Somalia and this could create problems throughout the region," Elisabeth Byrs of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told a news briefing in Geneva. Because of the widespread violence there, attacks on aid workers and the constant threat of coastal piracy, it is very difficult to distribute foreign aid around the country. Aid workers and foreigners are frequently kidnapped in Somalia, which has not had a functioning national government for 18 years.The World Health Organisation warned that medical conditions are also worrisome, with outbreaks of acute watery diarrhoea, cholera, measles and respiratory infections. "We see major health concerns continuing for Somalis," WHO spokesman Paul Garwood told the briefing.

The floods, which came about a week ago, have already driven thousands of Somali families out of their homes. In a devastating blow to hundreds of thousands of people already reeling from severe droughts, floods caused by days of torrential rains have made homeless more than 15,000 people in south western Somalia and nearly 5,000 people living on Kenya's Indian Ocean coast. And as many as 750,000 people may eventually be affected by floods and landslides from the current rainy season, the United Nation's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on the UN news website. The UN High Commissioner of Refugees said it was not clear whether a further wave of Somali migrants would head to Kenya, Ethiopia or Yemen across the Gulf of Aden. All three countries are already struggling with large numbers of Somali refugees.

Aid agencies have already appealed for emergency funds to alleviate the effects of the drought in east Africa which, they say, is causing severe food and water shortages and affecting about 23 million people. But the flooding caused by heavy rain from El Nino is no relief from the drought. "The consequences include massive displacement of populations and destroyed infrastructure, leading to escalated food prices in the affected regions," the Kenyan Red Cross told Reuters news service.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children