International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – Switzerland
Latest report on ICRC activities in the field
General situation
The Islamic Courts have reportedly continued to extend their influence both south and north of the capital.
In Mogadishu itself the situation is stable for the moment and people are coping as best they can.
Police and militias have been deployed in an effort to improve security in the city.
In the Bay and Bakool, Lower and Middle Juba, Gedo, Lower and Middle Shebele, and Hiran regions, the situation remains relatively stable, with isolated outbreaks of violence.
In the central regions, Puntland and Somaliland, clashes have menaced between armed groups in Galcaio town.
There are reports that the Ethiopian army has made incursions into Somali territory, exacerbating tensions among armed groups.
Water shortages – a frequent problem in central and southern regions of Somalia – are an additional cause of fighting between communities.
Finally, following the heavy rains in the Ethiopian highlands, an acute threat of flooding in some parts of the Shebele river valley, in southern Somalia, is causing widespread concern.
Humanitarian response
The ICRC is making a particular effort to improve the supply of water, so vital to the rural communities that constitute most of Somalia’s population.
In order to help local communities – in particular those living along nomadic routes – take advantage of the rainy season to store water for the dry season, the ICRC has been upgrading hundreds of storage facilities per year.
The objective is to help avoid pastoralist communities having to spend their meagre resources on water.
The ICRC is currently working on 50 water projects in Somalia that will benefit at least 160,000 people.
Those projects are in: Lower Shebele (repairing and upgrading rainwater-catchment devices with a total capacity of one million cubic metres for the benefit of 10,000 families and their livestock) Lower Juba (cleaning and chlorinating 50 wells and sinking two boreholes) Gedo (helping repair and upgrade 17 rainwater-catchment devices for the benefit of 150,000 people and their livestock) Galgudud (financing the sinking of a borehole, on a major nomadic route, capable of producing four litres per second, and supplying a generator to drive a water pump for villages around Galinsor).
To deal with the risk of flooding along the Shebele river, the ICRC is currently distributing 30,000 sandbags to communities in Middle Shebele.
For further information, please contact:
Pédram Yazdi, ICRC Somalia (in Nairobi), tel: +254 20 2723 963 or +254 722 51 81 42
Marco Yuri Jiménez Rodríguez, ICRC Geneva, tel: +41 22 730 2271 or +41 79 217 3217
See also ICRC media contacts
This article on www.icrc.org
Source: ICRC, Aug 26, 2006
