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Somalia situation 'severe'
30/01/2008 07:34 - (SA)
London - High levels of malnutrition and the difficulties of delivering aid make Somalia the world's most pressing humanitarian crisis, the United Nations refugee agency's representative there said on Tuesday.
More than one million people had fled their homes in Somalia, which was convulsed by fighting between Ethiopian-backed government forces, Islamist insurgents and an assortment of warlords.
"I've never seen anything like Somalia before," Guillermo Bettocchi, representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said during a visit to London.
"The situation is very severe. It is the most pressing humanitarian emergency in the world today - even worse than Darfur," he said, referring to the war in western Sudan, which had driven 2.5 million from their homes.
A bomb attack, which killed three foreign aid workers in Somalia on Monday underlined the difficulty in delivering aid in the anarchic country that had been wracked by clan violence for 17 years, he said.
Fifteen percent of the population suffered acute malnutrition while health services were very limited and sanitation, water and shelters were extremely poor, Bettocchi said.
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