The UN refugee agency UNHCR said Thursday it was expanding camps
for Somali refugees in eastern Kenya to accommodate an increasing
number of people fleeing Somalia.
A UN news release said an estimated 2,000 refugees have
arrived in Kenya from Somalia via the Liboi border post since last
Friday.
"A UN agency is likely to open a new camp in North Eastern
Province to accommodate the rising number of refugees from Somalia.
Most of the new arrivals are women and children from Mogadishu,
Kismayu and Baidoa," the news release said.
It said at least 1,300 refugees on Monday jammed a temporary
reception center set up by UNHCR on the Kenyan-Somali border,
adding to the 30,000 Somalis who have already crossed into Kenya so
far this year.
"However, the establishment of a new camp will only be
undertaken with the approval of the Government of Kenya," UNHCR
spokesman in Nairobi Emmanuel Nyabera said.
"If the number continued to grow, then another camp would be
opened at Dadaab. We are really concerned about the large number of
refugees who continue to arrive every day," Nyabera said.
The refugees are fleeing fighting between the Transitional
Federal Government and the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which are
contesting control of Buur Hakaba, a strategic town between Baidoa,
where the government is based, and the capital Mogadishu, which is
held by the ICU.
Nyabera said the UNHCR was in the process of expanding the three
camps in Dadaab with more than 143,000 refugees, the majority being
from Somalia.
"Only a week ago, there were 134,000 refugees in the three camps
Ifo, Hagadera and Dagahaley but the number has since risen," said
Nyabera, noting that most of the new arrivals were being settled in
Hagadera and Dagahaley.
"We require more funds to help the growing number of refugees.
So far, we have received 108 million shillings (about US$1.5
million) for current operation from the German Government and the
United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund," he said.
The latest arrivals have told aid workers they left their
country because of rising tensions between armed groups there,
including rivalry between the Transitional Federal Government and
the Union of Islamic Courts, which has extended its authority to
much of southern Somalia since it seized control of Mogadishu, the
capital, from an alliance of armed faction leaders.
The flaring tension in Somalia by rival groups has cast doubts
over the planned resumption of the third round of peace talks
between the government and the Islamists in Khartoum on October
30.
(Xinhua News Agency October 13, 2006)
