Red Cross: Somalia situation getting worse

May 29, 2009, 11:40 GMT

Geneva - The International Committee of the Red Cross warned Friday of a worsening humanitarian situation in war-torn Somalia which was causing thousands of people to flee their homes for safety.

'There has been a sharp deterioration in the situation in Somalia,' said the ICRC's Florian Westphal in Geneva.

His organization was delivering medical supplies and other goods to hospitals to make sure they were stocked in the event that a further deterioration would prevent future shipments.

'The hospitals' capacities are stretched but they are coping,' Westphal said, though it was unclear how much more they could shoulder.

The thousands of people on the run from Mogadishu, where dozens have been killed recently, were 'joining hundreds of thousands of displaced people in camps on the outskirts of the city and other areas of the country, or even in already overpopulated refugee camps in neighbouring countries,' the ICRC said.

Many of those fleeing have already been displaced in the past.

Armed clashes have also driven people from their homes in several cities in central and southern Somalia.

The clashes were not the countries only problem. Droughts were also taking their toll on the population, draining resources already limited by nearly two decades of conflict.

'Life is very difficult,' the ICRC quoted a Somali woman named Fatima as saying. She was a mother of four who lost track of her husband.

'My children ask me about their father every day,' Fatima said. 'I don't know what to tell them, because I don't know what happened to him. I am struggling to find something to eat. We don't have a place to sleep. All I want is a safe place to raise my children.'

The Red Cross only had figures on the two local hospitals it was supporting. Since January, the two facilities have treated more than 1,500 patients wounded by the war. Most of them were civilians, including women and children.

Westphal noted that of those patients, 650 have been treated since the start of May, in a worrying sign of the deteriorating situation in Somalia.