'We have nothing, nothing here'

Fierce clashes have led to casualties overwhelming local hospitals. Picture / Reuters.

MOGADISHU - In a place the rest of the world prefers to forget, the ones who suffer the most are the poor. But along with the sheer, grinding poverty of Mogadishu, the danger from endemic violence makes life even harder.

Those forced to dwell in the vast, sprawling refugee camps of this battered city have received little or no aid in months. There are around 280,000 of them, all living in some of the worst conditions in Africa.

And in the one major hospital not controlled by the militias, the commonest treatment is for "wounds inflicted by weapons".

After more than a decade of neglect the capital of Somalia is suddenly back in the world's spotlight after the victory last week of Islamist fighters over United States-backed warlords. But the same conflict has meant that aid organisations deem the city to be too dangerous for relief operations.

The shortage of funds is particularly hard for a country which has never benefited much from outside largesse. The US has backed the warlords, their allies in the "war on terror" against the Islamists to the tune of millions of dollars, but such generosity has not been reflected when it comes to aid.

Just a few kilometres from what used to be the city centre, Camp Masla, before it was blown to bits by guns in the long-running conflict, huts made out of branches and rags sit on a field turned into a foetid swamp by a day of torrential rain.

A donation of wheat and rice from a Muslim charity in the Middle East has provoked great excitement.

But it is the first seen there for more than two years and will amount to meagre shares for the 2500 residents.

There is no medicine, and the nearest drinking water is more than a kilometre away. Diseases such as malaria, which are exacerbated by malnutrition, claim dozens of lives each year, particularly among the very young and the elderly.

"We have nothing, nothing here", says 40-year-old Hadija Adem, who has lost three children during her 10 years at the camp. "I remember in the very early days we used to have some food from the foreigners, but that was years ago. We have one meal a day, maize and beans. The children do not get enough to eat and they fall sick."

Abdi Ali Hassan, 45, recalls: "We saw a foreign charity man here last year. He came with a lot of armed Somali guards. He did not talk to us but took lots of photographs, but that is the last we saw of him.

"We go into the city every day, we try to get work and the best pay will be one dollar a day. If we cannot find work we have to beg or look into the dustbins."

But the excursions out of the camp, the only way to find sustenance, have become highly dangerous in the past few weeks.

Ali Imani, 13, went out one morning and did not return. His body was discovered two days later, shot through the head. Ali's mother, Fadia Hassan, rocks on the torn piece of matting on her mud floor, clutching a picture of her son. "He was a good boy. He went out to get food for his mother and brothers and sister. I ask Allah every day why this happened ... " Her voice fades away.

Local charities are diverting money from other projects to help those who have fled the last round of fighting. Mohamed Abdulle Mahdi, of the Women Care Organisation, is helping to look after around 1800 people in the Sisse area. "We had to act, there were some terrible things happening," he says. "There was one poor woman who had been trapped in her home for 15 days by the bombing. The day she came out, with her baby in her arms, she was shot. We found the baby trying to suckle his mother."

The 65-bed Medina Hospital had to cope with more than 200 casualties a day during the last phase of the conflict. The staff there know that next time it will be much worse because the other main hospital, the Keysane, has been taken over by militia fighters.

"We brought in 80 extra beds because so many people were coming in injured," says deputy director Ali Mowalim Mohammed. "But that was with the Keysane working as well. I do not know what is going to happen next time. We shall just have to cope."

The Medina receives its supplies from the Red Cross and there is, at present, enough emergency stock to last for a month.

Of the 54 patients in the casualty ward yesterday, 50 were suffering from injuries caused by weapons, chiefly indiscriminate shelling into heavily populated areas by artillery and mortars, or wild firing from "technicals", gun-mounted 4WDs used by the militias.

Salalo Abdi was at home in northern Mogadishu, the scene of some of the heaviest exchanges between the warlords and the Islamists, when a mortar shell crashed through her ceiling. "I am in pain, but I am alive. I am also thankful that the children were not at home when this happened. We are living in very bad times."

- INDEPENDENT