Conflict in Somalia has killed 2 136 civilians so far this year, bringing the death toll since an Islamist-led insurgency began in early 2007 to 8 636, a local human rights group said on Thursday.
The Mogadishu-based Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said it had also recorded 11 790 injuries since the start of last year, when rebels began attacking the Somali government and its Ethiopian military allies.
The insurgency — the latest in a cycle of civil conflict since the 1991 fall of a military dictator — has compounded the effects of drought and poverty to create what aid workers call one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
”Somalia is no longer on the verge of catastrophe, the disaster is happening now,” Médecins sans Frontières director of operations Bruno Jochum told a Nairobi press conference in the latest international warning.
The United Nations says one million Somalis — out of a total population of about nine million — are living as internal refugees in the Horn of Africa nation.
But the Elman rights group, in figures given to Reuters, put that number at 1,9-million.
Tens of thousands of Somalis have fled to neighbouring Ethiopia and Kenya. — Reuters