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HORN OF AFRICA
IRIN-HOA Weekly Round-Up 277
30 April - 6 May 2005


CONTENTS:

DJIBOUTI: Livestock deaths threaten food security - UN
ERITREA: Government warns over looming hunger
ETHIOPIA: Rains pound Somali region as death toll rises
ETHIOPIA: Government appeals for more aid to combat malnutrition
ETHIOPIA: Court overturns controversial law
SOMALIA: CPJ concerned over attacks on reporters in Puntland
SOMALIA: Death toll in stadium explosion rises to 15
SUDAN: Meningitis reported in West Darfur IDP camps
SUDAN: Two aid workers killed in Kassala


ALSO SEE:

SOMALIA: Somaliland women take on new roles at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46907

DJIBOUTI: Livestock deaths threaten food security - UN

The failure of three consecutive rainy seasons has led to widespread
livestock deaths and a significant decline in milk production, creating
serious food insecurity in Djibouti, according to the UN Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO).

"The pastoralist families are dependent on their livestock for food and
income," Fernanda Guerrieri, chief of FAO's emergency operations, said
in a statement on Friday.

"Many have lost their entire herds, leaving them with nothing to eat or
trade." Delayed rains and erratic rainfall patterns had been
insufficient to replenish water catchments or regenerate pastures, FAO
said in a statement.

The agency said pastoralists from Djibouti and the neighbouring
drought-affected countries of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia had been
forced to graze in Djibouti's coastal areas, beyond the restorative
capacities of the land.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46911]


ERITREA: Government warns over looming hunger

An estimated one million Eritreans will go hungry unless the donor
community can give the country further support, a senior government
official in charge of food distribution, said on Tuesday. "We are
reaching less than 60 percent of the needy population," Teclemichael
Woldegeorgis, deputy commissioner at the Eritrean Relief and Refugee
Commission, told reporters in the capital, Asmara. "We are appealing to
the donor community to continue their assistance," he added. "Now the
hunger season starts, and that is the time when the majority of food is
required."

Teclemichael said some 135,000 mt of cereals, pulses, and oils had
already been pledged or delivered so far this year, but Eritrea needed
another 221,000 mt. Last year's harvest had probably been consumed
already, he added, and households would have to look for other sources
of food.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46940]


ETHIOPIA: Rains pound Somali region as death toll rises

The death toll from devastating floods that have hit eastern Ethiopia
rose to 154 as heavy rains continued to hamper relief efforts, officials
said on Wednesday. More than 150,000 had been affected by floodwaters
and torrential rains that continued to pound the Somali region for a
second week, officials added. Tens of thousands of livestock had also
been killed.

"The rains are continuing and the flooding is continuing," Remedan Haji
Ahmed, who heads the government's emergency response in the area, told
IRIN. "In the last 24 hours, five people have died," he added. "There
are still large areas that are cut off and now we are getting outbreaks
of diseases like malaria and diarrhoea." The UN said access to some of
the affected villages had been hindered because they were located in
areas that had remained cut off.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46953]


ETHIOPIA: Government appeals for more aid to combat malnutrition

Ethiopia on Wednesday launched an appeal for an extra US $48 million in
foreign aid for tens of thousands of children amid worsening
malnutrition across the country, officials said. The head of the
government's emergency arm, Simon Mechale, said the government needed an
extra 66,000 mt of food and $22 million for health, nutrition and water.
The flash appeal, which was announced at the Disaster Prevention and
Preparedness Commission (DPPC), came as the UN warned that thousands of
children could die if help was not forthcoming.

Bjorn Ljungqvist, head of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Ethiopia,
said at least 60,000 children needed urgent therapeutic feeding because
of growing malnutrition in the country. More than half a million
children also needed urgent help, he added, as a result of growing
hunger and diseases like measles and meningitis.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46941]


ETHIOPIA: Court overturns controversial law

Ethiopia's high court on Tuesday overturned a controversial law that had
effectively banned thousands of local observers from monitoring the
country's 15 May national election. Judge Brehanu Teshome said the new
rule, introduced last month by the country's National Election Board,
"contravened" the laws of the country.

The ruling, which came just 12 days before polling, meant local groups
could now field election observers to monitor Ethiopia's third-ever
democratic elections. However, the director of a coalition of local
groups that had planned to field 3,000 observers, Netsanet Demissie,
said they would not be able to deploy nearly as many monitors.

"Although this is a landmark decision, it is a ruling tinged with
sadness," Netsanet said at the federal high court in Addis Ababa. He
added: "We have shown that such arbitrary decisions will not be
tolerated by the public, [but] we will not be able to deploy as many
observers because we are so close to the elections and we do not have
enough time for proper training."

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46938]


SOMALIA: CPJ concerned over attacks on reporters in Puntland

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed
concern over what it said were attacks on the freedom of press in the
self-declared autonomous region of Puntland in northeastern Somalia.
Reporters there, it added, had been arrested and radio stations
threatened with censorship. In a letter to the president of Puntland,
Adde Muse Hirsi, dated 3 May, CPJ said two journalists from the weekly
newspaper "Shacab" (Voice of the People), in the town of Garowe, were
arrested in April and that there were threats to close the newspaper.

Authorities also planned to introduce identity cards for all
journalists, according to CPJ, and that there had been attempts to
censor radio coverage of sensitive political issues. "On April 20,
security forces attacked the premises of Shacab, breaking the front gate
and damaging the editor's car and other property, according to the
newspaper's editor and local press freedom groups.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46964]


SOMALIA: Death toll in stadium explosion rises to 15

The number of people killed in Tuesday's blast at a stadium in
Mogadishu, the Somali capital, rose 15, sources told IRIN on Wednesday.
The director of Mogadishu's Madina hospital, Shaykhdon Salad Ilmi, said
a number of people had died from injuries caused by the explosion. Of
the 41 people brought to Madina hospital, Ilmi said, "six died of their
injuries, while another one died in another hospital".

The explosion occured at a football stadium where the Somali
transitional Prime Minister, Ali Muhammad Gedi, was addressing a public
rally on his first visit to Mogadishu since being appointed by President
Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed in December 2004.

Gedi arrived in Mogadishu on 29 April accompanied by a team of
ministers, legislators and members of the international community. "A
hand grenade was accidentally dropped by a member of the security
detail, which then went off as the Prime Minister started his speech,"
Abdi Hassan Qaybdid, a senior security official in Mogadishu, told IRIN
by telephone. [Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46939]


SUDAN: Meningitis reported in West Darfur IDP camps

Cases of meningitis have been confirmed in three camps for internally
displaced persons (IDPs) in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, the
World Health Organization (WHO), said. The cases, it added, were of the
"Neisseria meningitides W135" type of the disease. They were found in
Riyad, Adamata and Abu Seroj IDP camps in West Darfur State. "According
to the Sudanese Federal Ministry of Health's standard operating
procedures, one laboratory confirmed meningitis case raises the alert
flag in any IDP camp," Sacha Bootsma, WHO communications officer in
Khartoum, told IRIN on Thursday.

The cases, however, Bootsma noted, did not occur in the same week and
not in the same IDP camp, and could therefore not be considered an
official outbreak. Meningitis is an infection of the meninges; the thin
lining that surrounds the brain and the spinal cord and is caused by
microbes that are often found in airborne dust. Several different
bacteria can cause meningitis, but "Neisseria meningitides" is one of
the most important because of its potential to cause epidemics. [Full
story at: http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46963]


SUDAN: Two aid workers killed in Kassala

Two Sudanese aid workers were killed on Sunday when their vehicle was
attacked near the eastern town of Kassala, close to the border with
Eritrea, a spokesperson for the Sudanese Red Crescent (SRC), told IRIN.
"Two staff members have been shot down, a third was injured and a fourth
was abducted and is still missing," Asaf Bukhari, SRC spokesperson, said
on Wednesday. "The attackers were driving a car when they suddenly
opened fire on the SRC vehicle." The SRC driver and a nurse died on the
spot from their wounds, the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) said in a separate statement, released on Tuesday.

An SRC medical assistant was severely injured in the attack and was
recovering in a hospital, the ICRC said. A fourth man, also a passenger
in the car, remained missing. The Sudanese army, Bukhari said, had found
the vehicle and suspected that most of the attackers were from the local
Rashida tribe. One attacker reportedly came from the western Sudanese
region of Darfur.

[Full story at:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=46935]


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
2005


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