Militants block aid to starving children in Somalia

NAIROBI: Lack of access to hungry parts of Somalia controlled by Islamist militants is threatening the lives of tens of thousands of malnourished children, a charity said today, as the war-torn nation risks falling back into famine.

Severe Acute Malnutrition, often fatal without medical care, has “skyrocketed” to more than three times the emergency threshold of 2% in Hiraan region’s Mataban District, a survey by Save the Children found.

“Scaling up to provide services to everyone affected is a challenge because we have around two million people living in al-Shabaabcontrolled areas,” said Hassan Noor Saadi, Save the Children’s Somalia country director.

In 2011, some 260 000 Somalis died of famine caused by drought, conflict and lack of access to humanitarian aid.

Somalia’s erratic spring rains were not good enough to guarantee crop growth, while livestock continue to die, leaving families with little to feed their children, Saadi said. “When animals die, there is no food, no milk, and no assets to make money off and subsequently buy food,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

More than 275 000 children potentially face life-threatening severe acute malnutrition this year, according to the UN children’s agency, Unicef.

Some 714 000 Somalis have fled their homes because of drought and failed crops since November, the UN says. Aid agencies are also struggling to save lives across the border in Ethiopia’s Somali region, where nomads whose livestock have been killed by drought have settled in informal camps.

Medecins Sans Frontieres teams have treated more than 6 000 children with severe acute malnutrition in the area since January, the medical charity said. “These numbers are the highest our teams there have seen in 10 years,” MSF spokeswoman Rosie Slater said. – Reuters