Over 185,000 Somalis Displaced Amid Clashes - UN

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th February, 2023) Over 185,000 Somalis have been displaced internally and 60,000 others have fled across the border to Ethiopia to escape clashes in Somalia's breakaway Somaliland region, the UN refugee agency said.

"Inside Somalia, more than 185,000 people have been displaced from Laascaanood town and its surrounding areas since early February," Olga Sarrado Mur, the agency's spokeswoman, said in Geneva.

The northern Somalian region, which declared independence in 1991, has been rocked for weeks by clashes between pro-independence forces and their opponents.

The UN Refugee Agency estimates that an average 1,000 people continue to cross into Ethiopia each day, stretching resources in the already impoverished eastern Ethiopian villages.

"The refugees are hosted in some of the areas in the country worst hit by the drought and the impact of climate change, following five consecutive failed rainy seasons," Sarrado Mur said.

Whatever humanitarian aid has been available to the locals is quickly depleting as more and more refugees, many of them women and children, continue to cross over in search of protection.

The UN agency said that relief items had been distributed among over 1,000 vulnerable families, with another 9,000 lined up to receive assistance that is expected to arrive in the coming days.