Blast during UN visit to Somalia
The United Nations’ top humanitarian official made a landmark visit to battle-scarred Mogadishu today, but the trip was disrupted by an explosion that killed three people and wounded one near the UN compound there.
John Holmes, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, is the highest ranking UN official to visit Mogadishu in more than a decade. His tour of the city and his meeting with president Abdullahi Yusuf was delayed briefly when the blast near the compound prompted a series of security briefings.
After a meeting with the president, Mr Holmes visited the former British Embassy where residents said nearly 200 families were living in the shell of the building or in huts in the compound.
About two weeks ago, Somalia’s government declared victory over a ferocious Islamic insurgency.
Aid groups say the fighting killed 1,670 people between March 12 and April 26 and sent up to 400,000 of the city’s 2 million residents fleeing, many into squalid camps or makeshift shelters in the bush
“While the fighting was going on we were very, very concerned about the plight of civilians. Clearly it was not the normal respect for humanitarian law,” Mr Holmes told the president.
He asked the president to allow humanitarian aid to enter Mogadishu without delay and to dismantle the checkpoints inside and outside the city so that food and relief supplies can get to the people.
Mr Yusuf told Holmes his government was trying.
“We are doing our best, unfortunately these terrorists are conducting guerrilla warfare. Now they have been defeated twice,” Mr Yusuf told Mr Holmes. “Many of them fled away but they left a group of terrorists in the city so they continue these terrorist actions. We are very sorry, but we have to pacify this country forever.”
“What we did was in self-defence,” the president said, about the latest fighting. “We had to defend the government.”
But the president told Holmes that “humanitarian aid will reach” whoever needs it.
After the meeting, Mr Holmes said the fighting in the city had violated the Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law.
“When you have a pitched battle going on in a city full of civilians that is not in accordance with the Geneva Convention,” he said.
Holmes said he had come to push the government to allow humanitarian aid to reach its people while it tried to build on the fragile peace in a country ravaged by continuous fighting.
“There is a serious humanitarian crisis and I want to come and see for myself, to talk to the authorities, to try to pressure them on the need to do all they can to facilitate humanitarian aid,” Holmes said shortly after he arrived. “It is their responsibility to look after civilians, to protect civilians and at the very least not to obstruct aid.”
When Holmes arrived this morning at the freshly painted blue and white terminal building at Mogadishu airport, armed African Union troops lined the road. As his 10-vehicle convoy of armoured land cruisers and pickup trucks drove to the UN compound over crumbling roads, women and children waved and yelled from the doorways of buildings battered by fighting and pockmarked with bullet holes.
He said it was not likely that they could bring in more Africa Union peacekeeping troops until the government improved security.
Paddy Nakunda, a Ugandan soldier with the African Union force, said the explosion near the UN compound was a roadside bomb that killed three people and wounded another. He said there was also another explosion in north Mogadishu, but he did not have any details on that blast.
