SOMALIA: Rains wash away IDP shelters in Mogadishu

Photo: IRIN

A group IDPS shelter under a tree: Flash floods have rendered homeless thousands of IDPs living in camps in and around Mogadishu (file photo)

NAIROBI, 19 October 2009 (IRIN) - Flash floods have rendered homeless thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in camps in and around Mogadishu, the Somali capital, locals say.

"The rains that fell on Friday and Saturday [16 and 17 October] destroyed many of the makeshift shelters," Jowahir Ilmi, head of the Somali Women Concern (SWC), a local NGO, said. "The resulting floods washed away many of the shelters."

Ilmi said many IDP families lost everything - "the floods took their utensils and anything that was not fixed to the ground”.

Bilmo Nur, who is looking after four grandchildren, told IRIN she sought shelter with another family after the rains destroyed her makeshift home. “My grandson [18 months old] was almost swept away by the water.”

Nur said the children were weak and she was worried the cold weather would make matters worse.

"We don’t have food but we need shelter more urgently,” she said, adding that there had been a break in the rains but it was not expected to last long. “I hope we will get some tents and plastic sheeting before the next [flood].”

Khadra Ali, a community activist in the camps, told IRIN that many in the Ali Somali displaced camp, home to 350 families (2,100 people), were sleeping in the open. “If, as expected, we get another downpour today or tomorrow, we don’t have any place to shelter.”

Ilmi said the rains were also making the sanitary conditions of the camps worse. “The conditions were bad to begin with but the rains are making them worse.”

Photo: IRIN

The displaced outside their makeshift shelters in Mogadishu: Officials say rains that fell on 16 and 17 October destroyed many of the shelters (file photo)

At the mercy of mosquitoes

Meanwhile, in the southern coastal city of Kismayo, 500km south of Mogadishu, heavy rains are adding to the misery of the displaced who fled the city during the recent fighting between two Islamist groups, a local activist told IRIN.

The source said thousands of IDP families who had not returned to city were at the "mercy of the rains and mosquitoes".

"Around 6,000 families [36,000 people] are living in the open or in very poor conditions," the source said, adding that most of those who fled the city [on 30 September and 1 October] had not returned.

Some 900,000 people who fled the fighting in Mogadishu between the government and Islamist insurgents have settled in the Mogadishu and Afgoye corridor, according to aid agencies.

Conflict, drought and hyperinflation have combined to create a humanitarian crisis in Somalia, with some 3.6 million needing food aid, according to the UN.

ah/mw