Somali militants to block UN aid

ISLAMIST rebels in Somalia — who control the parts of the country where famine was declared this week — have said aid agencies they expelled from those areas last year cannot return, reversing a previous pledge.

The al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab militants imposed a ban on food aid in 2010, which the UN and Washington say has worsened the crisis, before appearing to reverse it last week.

The UN World Food Program (WFP) was among several groups ordered out of rebel areas which are now preparing to return, describing the situation in Somalia as “extremely dire”.

The United Nations said it had not heard about any new position from the rebels and planned to take last week’s pledge at face value and push ahead with food shipments by air and sea.

Al-Shabab had promised to allow relief agencies with “no hidden agendas” greater access to their territory.

“The so-called aid agencies that were already banned and named are not part of the agencies we free to work in al-Shabab areas,” al-Shabab spokes- man, Ali Mohamud Raghe, told a news conference in a rebel-held part of the capital Mogadishu.

“They had problems with people and had a hidden agenda. We shall also expel any agency that causes problems for Muslim society,” he said, urging hungry Somalis to stay in their homes and wait for the rain to come rather than going to foreign-run refugee camps.

Some 10 million people are affected by famine and drought in a region, dubbed the “triangle of death” by local media.

The UN said it had a “moral imperative” to get back into the areas from which it had been ordered out. “The approach is to test the ground, to probe and see how far we get,” said WFP spokesman, David Orr.

“We are going to push the operation out unless we hear any different.”