Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/LAS ANOD: Over 60,000 Somali refugees have fled to Ethiopia after an escalation in fighting in Las Anod, in the Sool region, where the tension between local citizens and the governing Somaliland authorities have been building for weeks.
The United Nations (UN) said the refugees had arrived in the part of Ethiopia that had been massively hit by drought after five consecutive failed rains and that several people were sleeping in the open and sheltering in schools and other public buildings.
Olga Sarrado Mur, the spokesperson for the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR, said: “Exhausted and traumatized, they have arrived with little, only taking what they could carry. Women said they had to sell their belongings to pay for transportation costs to reach safety. Several have lost loved ones in the clashes and have been separated during flight.”
Thousands of displaced people
The UN said 89 per cent of the 185,000 internally displaced people from Las Anod and surrounding places were women and children without proper shelter. The Red Crescent said that few people had been displaced earlier from places facing severe drought after repeated failed rains.
The United Nations said that 82 people have been killed in fighting that involved shelling civilian places, damaging health facilities and electricity and water supplies. The United Nations children’s agency, the damage had left the displaced Somalis with limited water and sanitation sources, and 80% had to defecate in the open.
Markus Virgil Höhne, the social anthropologist at Leipzig University and specialist in northern Somalia, said that the fighting had forced the local population into rural places and put pressure on resources.
