The aid group Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, Doctors Without Borders) said on Friday it was pulling all its international staff out of Somalia after three of its staff were killed by a roadside bomb.
”As a mark of our respect and given the lack of clarity surrounding the circumstances of the attack, for the time being MSF has suspended all international staff presence,” the medical humanitarian organisation said in a statement released in Nairobi.
”Eighty-seven international staff have been withdrawn from 14 projects across Somalia,” it added.
A Kenyan doctor, a French logistics expert and a Somali driver with the aid group were killed along with a local journalist by a roadside bomb in south-west Somalia on Monday.
”We find this attack against one of our teams absolutely intolerable, and a serious violation of the humanitarian action to which our late colleagues were so committed,” said MSF international council president Christophe Fournier.
”Although life-saving medical activities continue under the supervision of our dedicated Somali colleagues, the suspension will clearly hamper the essential medical work of MSF in Somalia,” Fournier warned.
The MSF action comes as Somalia is facing a critical emergency with escalating violence, massive displacement and what the aid group described as ”acute unmet medical needs”.
MSF said the majority of the international staff being withdrawn would go to neighbouring Kenya, with no specific date for their return to Somalia.
Over the past year, the restive Horn of Africa country has become increasingly dangerous for Somalis and foreigners alike.
Hundreds of Somali civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced by bitter fighting between Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian-backed government forces.
The fighting has taken place mainly in the capital, Mogadishu, but attacks have recently spread to other parts of the country.
A recent report by the African Union warned that Islamist insurgents had started expanding their area of operations in a bid to further destabilise stretched and ill-trained Somali forces.
”Over the past weeks, the anti-government forces have spread their activities to regions that were previously peaceful, though not necessarily under government control,” it said. — AFP
