Sharp increase in number of refugees entering Kenya

Sharp increase in number of refugees entering Kenya

Recently arrived Somali refugees at Ifo camp, Dadaab, northeastern Kenya.

NAIROBI, 27 Sep 2006 (IRIN) - Instability in southern Somalia has led to a sharp increase in the number of refugees entering Kenya, according to the United Nations agency for refugees (UNHCR).

"In a one-week period this month, some 3,400 refugees were registered," Emmanuel Nyabera, the UNHCR spokesman, said on Wednesday. Most are fleeing the tension in the country "and are coming from as far as Mogadishu and Kismayo", he added.

At least 25,000 Somali refugees have arrived in Kenya since the beginning of the year to join 130,000 others living in refugee camps since 1991 in the arid Dadaab area in the northeastern province, said UNHCR.

"On Monday this week, 277 refugees crossed the Liboi border point into Dadaab refugee camp. Today [Wednesday], we are expecting between 250 and 300 refugees," said Nyabera.

From February to June, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) fought to oust an alliance of warlords from the capital, Mogadishu.

Mogadishu has been calm since early July but the flow of people from Somalia, many from Mogadishu, the southern port city of Kismayo, and Baidoa, seat of the country's transitional government, has continued, according to UNHCR.

The UIC took Kismayo on 25 September, after the leader of a local militia that controlled the city left a day earlier. The city's capture completed the UIC's control of all ports in southern and central Somalia. It also extended the group's control over south-central Somalia, isolating the Transitional Federal Government [TFG] in Baidoa.

The sharp increase in the number of people seeking refuge in Kenya is "threatening to exhaust food-aid stocks unless urgent donations are made", the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.

"Unless we get new funds for our refugee operation immediately, we will have to cut rations in the camps in November," said Marian Read, WFP’s deputy country director in Kenya. "It is a terrible decision to face but we have no choice – we can’t wait until food stocks run out. Even with the cuts, we will still run out of food in February next year. The situation is dire."

Meanwhile, Ethiopia's Foreign Affairs Ministry on Tuesday denied the presence of Ethiopian troops in Baidoa, the temporary seat of the TFG, or anywhere else in the country.

However, the UIC, which made the claim on Monday when it took Kismayo, maintained that hundreds of troops wearing Ethiopian military uniforms in at least 50 trucks were seen in Baidoa on Monday. An eyewitness said troops wearing similar military uniforms were camped in Bonkay, 5 km west of Baidoa, and Daynunay, 30 km east of Baidoa.

"There are no Ethiopian troops in Somalia; it is the extremists of the UIC who breached the ceasefire agreement that they had reached with the TFG in Khartoum," Salomon Abebe, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said. "We are not in Baidoa or anywhere else in Somalia."

Ibrahim Hassan Adow, the UIC’s secretary of foreign affairs, called "on the African Union, the UN and international community at large to condemn this naked aggression".
Reacting to the takeover of Kismayo, interim Prime Minister Ali Muhammad Gedi told a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, that the UIC's move was an act of aggression. He said the international community should support the TFG to stop the expansion of terrorism in the region.

However, Adow dismissed Gedi's accusations, saying the UIC had no links to al-Qaeda and would welcome "any impartial and independent group to come and see for themselves that there are no terrorists here".

The TFG was installed in late 2004 but since June, the UIC has taken control of Mogadishu and most of southern and central Somalia. The UIC defeated warlords who had controlled the city since 1991, following the collapse of the regime headed by the late president, Muhammad Siyad Barre.

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Source: IRIN, Sept 27, 2006