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/ 5 January 2008

UN concern at Kenyan humanitarian crisis

United Nations agencies have expressed increasing concern for the plight of up to 250 000 Kenyans displaced by post-election violence, as international diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis continued. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that at least 100 000 people in the northern Rift Valley alone needed immediate help.

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/ 23 December 2007

Aid workers face uphill battle in Somalia

The handful of grain Abiye Omar clutches in her skinny hand has travelled a long way from the fertile fields of America’s Midwest to the desolate Somali seaside town of Merka. It has sailed on a relief ship through seas plagued by pirates and sharks, then been carried ashore by porters into the hands of aid workers who have to contend with bandits, arsonists and insurgents.

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/ 16 December 2007

Cricket makes return to tsunami-hit stadium

England and Sri Lanka will mark one of cricket’s most poignant moments when they contest the third Test at the previously tsunami-ravaged Galle International Stadium from Tuesday. The stadium, situated close to the Indian Ocean in the country’s coastal south, was destroyed by the Asian tsunami in 2004.

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/ 5 December 2007

Somali leader in hospital as Islamist rejects talks

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf spent a second day in hospital on Wednesday with a condition some sources called very serious but an envoy said was a routine check-up for an old liver transplant. In a tumultuous week for Somali politics, an exiled Islamist leader rejected a call by Somalia’s new prime minister for talks to try to end 16 years of conflict.

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/ 4 December 2007

UN: Somalia freezes aid operations in south-east

The Somali government has frozen aid activities in a south-eastern region most affected by the country’s growing humanitarian crisis, a United Nations spokesperson told reporters on Tuesday. The new restrictions ban all humanitarian flights to the Lower Shabelle region’s airports, World Food Programme spokesperson Peter Smerdon said.

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/ 23 November 2007

Rebels, army clash in eastern DRC

Explosions and machine-gun fire echoed through the hills of east Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Friday, as government troops battled rebels for a third day amid a worsening humanitarian crisis that has displaced nearly 200 000 people in the past few months, a United Nations military spokesperson said.

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/ 20 November 2007

Bangladesh cyclone death toll nears 3 500

Urgently needed supplies of food, water and medicine were on Tuesday nearing people in remote areas of Bangladesh where a devastating cyclone has left millions homeless and thousands dead. With roads now cleared of hundreds of trees that had blocked aid convoys, officials said relief was finally starting to get through to the most inaccessible areas.

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/ 30 October 2007

Taliban causing Afghan aid crisis, says UN

The United Nations on Monday demanded that the Taliban stop killing aid workers and looting aid convoys so that emergency supplies can reach vulnerable Afghans. Tom Koenigs, head of the UN mission to Afghanistan, said 34 aid workers had been killed by the Taliban and criminal gangs and 76 abducted so far this year.

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/ 23 October 2007

Somalia releases UN food agency chief

Somali authorities on Tuesday released the local head of the World Food Programme, who was seized nearly a week ago when government forces stormed a United Nations compound in Mogadishu. "He is safely back in the office. He was brought by some government officers as well as local UN staffers," a UN official said in Mogadishu.

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/ 17 October 2007

Somali forces storm UN compound

Up to 60 Somali intelligence officers stormed a United Nations compound in Mogadishu on Wednesday and seized the World Food Programme’s local chief of operations at gunpoint. WFP said it was forced to suspend food distribution, which started on Monday, to more than 75 000 people in the capital Mogadishu.

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/ 17 October 2007

Piracy on the rise off Somalia

Piracy off Somalia is on the rise because an Islamic group that had cracked down on pirates was ousted, an official who tracks piracy cases off Africa’s side of the Indian Ocean said. Earlier, an international watchdog reported maritime pirate attacks worldwide had shot up 14% in the first nine months of 2007.

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/ 12 October 2007

Renewed fighting breaks out in east DRC

Renewed fighting broke out on Friday between the regular army and renegade troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Nord-Kivu province, a local spokesperson with the United Nations mission in DRC said. "Clashes have been reported from Katsiru, a village between Mweso and Kitchanga," Monuc spokesperson Claude Cyrille said.

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/ 10 October 2007

MSF: Traditional food aid not enough for Africa

Conventional food aid is not enough to solve Africa’s malnutrition crisis, especially in nations wracked by conflict, an international health agency said on Wednesday. In a continent where thousands of young children suffer from acute malnutrition, the use of nutrient-dense ready-to-use foods needs urgent expansion, Médécins Sans Frontières (MSF) said.

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/ 8 October 2007

Mugabe urges unity to boost agricultural sector

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Monday called for unity among the country’s main political rivals to revive the country’s moribund agricultural sector. ”Let’s work together, all of us,” Mugabe said at a ceremony in the capital, Harare, where he commissioned a range of farming equipment to be distributed to fledgling farmers.

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/ 2 October 2007

Zimbabwe shops hit by bread shortages

Zimbabwe’s supermarkets have run out of bread after bakers were forced to suspend their operations due to a critical shortage of wheat, shop owners said on Tuesday. ”I don’t know when we will have bread although we have been expecting deliveries since last week,” said Kassim Ngorima, a manager in a supermarket in Harare’s Avenues area.

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/ 30 September 2007

‘Acutely serious’ hunger in Zimbabwe

A government report blamed constant power failures for a drastic drop in wheat production, the official media reported Sunday. A two thirds shortfall in wheat harvests was expected to worsen chronic bread shortages. Most bakeries were closed during the past week as flour deliveries dried up.

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/ 26 September 2007

Vital road reopens after Angolan civil war

A two-year bridge-building project in Angola has reopened a vital road to a large area of the country’s isolated eastern Moxico province, destroyed during a 27-year civil war, the United Nations said on Wednesday. The main road leading to Lumbula N’guimbo was heavily mined during the war, which ended in 2002.

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/ 22 September 2007

Urgent appeals sounded for Africa flood relief

Aid agencies have appealed for millions of dollars to help more than one million Africans affected by deadly floods that have swept across the continent. The floods have killed at least 200 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in 17 countries since the summer, including Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Uganda and Kenya.

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/ 21 September 2007

Rains keep pouring down across Africa

Floods are continuing to ravage an arc of African countries from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa, washing away homes and ruining crops, and have been reported as the worst in years in many states. Uganda is experiencing its worst floods in memory, with about 89 000 households ”severely affected”.

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/ 19 September 2007

UN: 1,5-million affected by Africa floods

The number of people affected by Africa’s worst floods in decades has risen from one million to 1,5-million, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Wednesday. ”Floods across Africa are reported to be the worst in decades in some places and extend in an arc from Mauritania in the west to Kenya in the east,” WFP said in a statement.

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/ 18 September 2007

African floods set to worsen, warns UN

United Nations agencies on Tuesday warned that the worst floods seen in parts of Africa for decades could intensify in the coming days and appealed for international aid to avert the threat of disease. About a million people have been affected by torrential rains stretching between West and East Africa since July.

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/ 17 September 2007

Fears mount over more floods in Africa

Fears mounted on Monday that downpours that have killed dozens in Africa, uprooted hundreds of thousands and devastated crops could continue past the end of the rainy season and hit areas that have so far escaped floods. Experts say the rising waters may hit as yet unaffected areas in the coming days.

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/ 8 September 2007

Fighting erupts in eastern DRC

Fresh clashes have erupted between a renegade general and government troops in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The United Nations said violence in the region was hampering efforts to deliver food to tens of thousands of displaced
civilians.