Al-Shabaab rebels stormed and looted offices of aid organizations in famine-hit Somalia on Monday, the UN said, and the rebels announced a ban on 16 relief agencies from areas they control.
Rebels occupied agency offices and took supplies in southern and central areas at a time when a quarter of a million Somalians face starvation and Kenyan, Somalian and Ethiopian forces are fighting the al-Qaeda-inspired group.
Al-Shabaab, which controls large areas of the anarchic country, said it had “decided to permanently revoke the permissions of the following organizations to operate inside Somalia,” naming 16.
These included agencies like the UN refugee agency UNHCR, the WHO, the UN children’s agency UNICEF and the Norwegian and Danish Refugee Councils. The International Committee for the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontieres escaped the ban.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, through his spokesman, condemned in the strongest terms possible the seizure of property and equipment belonging to aid groups and UN agencies.
UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos said she was extremely concerned by the looting, urging the rebel group to reverse the announcement and withdraw from seized compounds of aid groups.
“Any disruption to ongoing humanitarian efforts threatens to undermine the fragile progress made this year and could bring back famine conditions in several areas,” Amos said in a statement.
The rebels, who are hostile to Western intervention, banned food aid last year in the areas they controlled and kicked many groups out, saying aid created dependency. They lifted the ban in July when the food crisis hit critical levels, only to re-impose it later.
Some organizations were found to be “persistently galvanizing the local population against the full establishment of the Islamic Sharia system,” the group said in a statement.
Al-Shabaab, which wants to impose its harsh interpretation of Sharia, the Islamic moral and legal code, also accused the banned groups of financing and aiding “subversive groups seeking to destroy the basic tenets of the Islamic penal system.”
Pieter Desloovere, WHO Somalia’s communications officer, said the agency’s offices in the Somali towns of Baidoa and Wajid had been attacked on Monday.
UNICEF’s Jaya Murthy said the agency’s offices had been occupied by al-Shabaab in Baidoa on Monday.
“All of our staff that were in the office at the same time were asked to leave. All of our staff are safe. Our Baidoa office is currently still being occupied. No other UNICEF office is currently being occupied and all staff in Somalia are safe,” Murthy said.
Aid sources said al-Shabaab rebels had occupied UNICEF, WHO and non-governmental organization offices in Baidoa and six other the rebel-controlled towns.
A number of the aid agencies are funded by Western nations which support Kenya’s incursion into Somalia against al-Shabaab.
Some aid efforts were suspended after Kenya sent troops into southern Somalia more than six weeks ago to crush the militants. Military action has also prevented displaced people returning home to plant crops during the rainy season.
A Baidoa resident described how the militants had seized the UNICEF and WHO offices there.
“Al-Shabaab have just started to loot UNICEF and WHO compounds in the town — they stormed and seized the compounds two hours ago. Now I can see them carrying the agencies’ equipment out,” Ali Abdullahi said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in