Top UN humanitarian official visits Somalia’s capital

May 12, 2007 ( MOGADISHU) — The United Nations’ top humanitarian official made a landmark visit to this battle-scarred capital Saturday, pushing for the government to allow aid to reach its people while it tries to build on a fragile peace in this country ravaged by continuous fighting.

“There is a serious humanitarian crisis and I want to come and see for myself, to talk to the authorities, to try to pressure them on the need to do all they can to facilitate humanitarian aid,” said John Holmes, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs. “It is their responsibility to look after civilians, to protect civilians and at the very least not to obstruct aid.”

The trip comes about two weeks after Somalia’s government declared victory over a ferocious Islamic insurgency. Aid groups say the fighting killed 1,670 people between March 12 and April 26 and sent up to 400,000 of the city’s 2 million residents fleeing, many of them into squalid camps or makeshift shelters in the bush.

Witnesses said four people were killed in an explosion Saturday morning just 400 yards from the U.N. compound in south Mogadishu.

But the capital remains mostly calm and many displaced people are starting to return. The government, however, has declared victory before only to have the insurgents reappear weeks later.

Holmes is the highest ranking U.N. official to visit Mogadishu in more than a decade.

When he arrived Saturday morning at the freshly painted blue and white terminal building at Mogadishu airport, armed African Union troops lined the road. As his 10-vehicle convoy of armored land cruisers and pickup trucks drove to the U.N. compound in south Mogadishu over crumbling roads, women and children waved and yelled from the doorways of buildings battered by fighting and pockmarked with bullet holes.

Holmes said the current relative calm in Mogadishu had allowed a trickle of displaced people to begin coming back. But he wondered allowed if the fighting had left them any homes to return to.

“It is a really seriously alarming situation that could get much worse,” he said.

The insurgents are linked to the Council of Islamic Courts, which had ruled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for six quiet months last year. The U.S. has accused the group of links to al-Qaida, which it has consistently denied.

The Islamists were ousted in a swift operation over the New Year with the crucial help of troops and helicopter gunships from neighboring Ethiopia and U.S. special forces. The militants reject any secular government, and have sworn to launch an Iraq-style insurgency.

(AP)