France announced that 66-year-old Marie Dedieu, who was kidnapped on October 1 from her beach house in Kenya, and taken to Somalia, has died in the hands of her captors, most probably because they had refused to provide her medication.
The kidnappers seem to have tried to sell the remains. “It could not be more despicable,” French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said.
“Those who committed this unspeakable act are nothing but a gang of barbarians,” President Nicolas Sarkozy told AFP.
Links to: Yahoo News
PARIS, FRANCE – The French foreign ministry has announced the death of Marie Dedieu, 66, who was kidnapped the night of 30 September from her home on the small island of Manda, then taken to Somalia. Dedieu, who used a wheelchair, was taking medication to treat a cardiac problem and cancer; the wheelchair and the drugs were not taken by her kidnappers and the French government has surmised that she died as a result.
Foreign ministry spokesperson Bernard Valero said in a statement Wednesday 19 October that her kidnappers had refused to pass along the medicine the French government had supplied, and this most likely resulted in her death. Foreign Minister Alain Juppé called her death an act of “barbarism, violence and unspeakable inhumanity.”
Le Monde reports that she was an active and militant feminist in the 1970s in France. She moved to Kenya in the 1990s.
© 2011 MSF / Brendan Bannon
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Two women, Medecin Sans Frontieres (MSF) staff, were kidnapped at 13:20 Thursday 13 October from the Ifo extension area of the Dadaab refugee complex in Kenya. Their driver is undergoing urgent medical treatment after being shot.
Dadaab is the world’s largest refugee camp, with 463,739 Somali refugees, more than 190,000 of whom have fled Somalia this year.
MSF issued the following statement, saying that in the interests of the safe return of the woman, it will not issue further statements:
“Two international staff, both Spanish, were taken. As yet, MSF has not been able to re-establish contact with the two staff taken. A crisis team has been set up to deal with this incident, and the families have been informed.
“‘We strongly condemn this attack,’ says José Antonio Bastos, the president of MSF-Spain. ‘MSF is in contact with all the relevant authorities and is doing all it can to ensure the swift and safe return of our colleagues. Meanwhile, our thoughts are with them and with their families in this difficult time.’”
International agencies expressed their outrage. “These MSF colleagues were working to rescue lives, says UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres. “It is wholly unacceptable that they should be made targets for kidnap. I appeal to those responsible to facilitate their immediate and safe return.”
ICRC, the International Red Cross, has been increasingly vocal about the dangers facing international independent aid workers.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The ICRC (International Red Cross) said Wednesday 5 October that it has started to distribute food to help 1.1 million Somalis living in the areas hardest hit by war, in southern and central Somalia. Enough beans, rice and oil to survive for one month are already being given to 72,000 people in the Gedo region, says the ICRC, and several more distribution rounds are planned.
The distribution follows successful negotiations with the Al-Shabaab militants who have control of the region. The ICRC said Wednesday that Al-Shabaab is respecting its neutrality. It has been working in Somalia since 1978 and since 1982 has had local and Nairobi-based staff, some of whom can venture into areas closed to foreigners. It works closely with the Somali Red Crescent Society.
The region has been closed to foreign aid groups, adding to the woes of the estimated 750,000 people who may be close to starvation, according to the UN, and the 4 million who are considered by the UN to be in need of aid. The UN in September declared a famine in six regions in the country.
The US considers Al-Shabaab a terrorist organization with close ties to Al Qaeda.
“While food distributions are needed to relieve immediate suffering, the ICRC also aims over the medium term to give the population the means to sustain their own livelihoods,” the Geneva-based group says in a Wednesday press release.
Special envoy Joli can help draw attention to “some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations”
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Actress Angelina Jolie was asked Tuesday 4 October by the head of the UN refugee organization UNHCR to take on a new role as special envoy, in the wake of several new emergency refugee situations this year.
The invitation was extended by High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, who recognized her 10 years of service with the agency by asking her to take on an expanded role in some of the world’s most difficult refugee situations.
His request came just as news reports began to flow in of a bomb blast in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. Seventy people were reportedly killed and 150 injured, according to Somalia’s President Sharif Sheikh Ahmedhe.
Al-Shabab, which is fighting the government, took responsibility for the suicide bomb. The news is the latest evidence of the rising level of violence in the country, from which people are fleeing in growing numbers.
The Dabaad camps in Kenya, across the border from Somalia, now have nearly half a million people, with 1,000 arriving daily. Some 200,000 Somalis have fled to these camps in the past four months.
UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie at the annual meeting of the refugee agency's governing body.
Jolie is in Geneva for the annual meeting of UNHCR’s executive committee, which oversees funding for the organization and its projects.
She has become one of the best-known goodwill ambassadors for a UN agency, through her regular and frequent visits, on average four a year, to refugee camps around the world, including some in very remote regions. She took on the ambassadorial role in August 2001.
“Today, three-quarters of a million people are at risk of death in the next four months in the Horn of Africa,” she told the executive committee. “The work we are doing needs to scale up to meet the needs of these individuals. How we continue to respond to this period of malnutrition and famine is going to define the work of those NGOs, governments, and international organizations working in the Horn of Africa. It will, quite starkly, determine whether a huge number of people live or die.”
Monday Jolie shared the spotlight with Nasser Salim Ali Al-Hamairy, founder of Yemen’s Society for Humanitarian Solidarity: she co-presented with Guterres the 2011 Nansen Refugee Award, given to the SHS. The prize, widely considered the refugee world’s highest honour, was awarded to the founder and the 290 staff of SHS, a non-governmental organization, for their life-saving work in helping thousands of refugees and migrants who arrive on Yemen’s shores each year.
The staff comb the Yemeni coastline year round, pulling people from the sea and helping them find safety and assistance.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The rescue of a French woman kidnapped last week in Kenya failed Saturday 1 October and 2 Kenyan Navy officers died in the attempt.
In the Philippines, there was good news as Filipino-American Gerfa Yeatts Lunsmann was released early Monday 3 October after two months. Abu-Sayyaf rebels still hold her 14-year-old son and her 19-year-old nephew. Zamboanga Mayor Celso Lobregat, who is credited by US authorities with playing a key role in her release, told local media there was no talk of ransom. Yeatts Lunsmann was born in the Philippines but adopted by a family in the US, where she was raised. She works as a veterinarian in Virginia, where she and her husband and son live.
French woman Marie Dedieu, 66, who is disabled, was kidnapped from her Mandu Island cottage and Kenyan authorities believe she is now in Somalia, taken there by al Shabaab militia members. A rescue attempt at sea by the Kenya Navy failed. Some of the naval officers were in a fishing boat which capsized in an accident and two of them remain lost at sea.
Dedieu’s kidnapping comes less than a month after two British citizens, David Tebbutt and his wife Judith were kidnapped in Kiwayu, near Lamu. He was killed and she was taken to Somalia by the same militia group, authorities say.
Links to other sites: BBC, MSNBC (family photo), Sun Star, Philippines, The Nation, Kenya
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Ikea Foundation has donated $62 million to the UN refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, working with the UNHCR. The camp, which is a focal point for Somalians fleeing fighting, drought and famine, now hosts 440,000 refugees from Somalia, 152,000 of whom have arrived this year.
“The donation, which will be staggered over three years, is the largest private donation that the UN refugee agency has received in its 60-year history, and the first time that a private body has chosen to directly support a major refugee complex. UNHCR is working with the staff of the Foundation on the development of a detailed submission for how these funds will be used, but in the short-term the immediate focus will be helping the needs of up to recently arrived 120,000 refugees, with a particular focus on refugee families and children,” the UNHCR says.
AFRICA – An unnamed UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s representative in Kenya has said to the Associated Press that the situation in Somalia could become “simply unbearable” in the coming weeks if people continue to abandon their homes in search of food.
The food crisis in the Horn of Africa is escalating, with 12 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda requiring emergency assistance, said FAO.
Parts of southern Somalia are suffering from famine.
Over the past year, the region has faced two poor rainy seasons, resulting in one of the driest years since 1950. In addition, high local cereal prices, excessive livestock mortality, conflict and restricted humanitarian access in some areas is worsening the situation for Somalis.
A high-level operational meeting has been called for 18 August 2011 at FAO’s Rome headquarters to agree on urgent measures in response to the worsening crisis in the Horn of Africa.
Links to: FAO, the Associated Press
Europe, with only 29 percent of world’s refugee applications, called on to do more
Update 11:30, latest Somalia figures GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – UNHCR, the Geneva-based refugee organization, barely has time to observe its own birthday, which is in itself a comment on the state of refugee affairs in the world today.The UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is an international treaty created after the second world war to resolve Europe’s refugee problem. It was adopted 28 July 1951.
“This global treaty provides a definition of who qualifies as a refugee – a person with a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion – and spells out the rights and obligations between host countries and refugees. As the legal foundation on which UNHCR’s work is based, it has enabled the agency to help millions of uprooted people to restart their lives in the last 60 years,” the group notes in an anniversary statement issued Thursday.
Libya’s million, Somalia’s 800,000
Africa has seen a surge in refugees in 2011, with the fighting linked to the demise of several dictatorships. Libya alone has created one million refugees. Somalia is the latest crisis-riddled country to create a massive outflow, with years-long fighting now couple with the worst drought in half a century that has now created a severe famine. More than 800,000 Somali refugees now live outside their country, with the vast majority in the region:
| COUNTRY OF ASYLUM | TOTAL NUMBER |
| Kenya |
351,773 |
| Ethiopia |
81,247 |
| Djibouti |
14,216 |
| Yemen |
180,341 |
| Others |
17,306 |
| Total |
644,883 |
Nearly 1.5 million more Somalis are internally displaced, mostly in the south-central region of the country. More than 100,000 of them have been displaced inside Somalia so far this year.
80% of world’s refugees flee to neighbouring developing countries
Somalia refugees were already fleeing their country in July 2009, before fighting was coupled with famine (photo ©2011 UNHCR / E Hockstein)
Somalia’s refugees now number some 450,000 in neighbouring countries Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti, and the numbers are growing daily, says the UNHCR. Tunisia and Egypt have “received the bulk of the exodus from Libya” says the organization, which underscores that four-fifths of the world’s refugees are in developing countries.
Europe, by contrast, received 243,000 refugee applications in 2010, 29 percent of the world’s total. Antonio Guterres, the High Commissioner for Refugees, says that “at present, a truly common system remains elusive, as significant differences persist among Member States in their reception and treatment of asylum-seekers. The 60th anniversary of the Refugee Convention, we hope, will give impetus to the establishment of a true Common European Asylum System. Europe could also do more to resettle refugees,” referring to the process through which refugees in one country, usually in the developing world, are permanently relocated to new countries, usually in the developed world.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Appeals are being launched from Geneva to help fight the famine that is following the worst drought in 50 years in southern Somalia, coupled with fighting in the region. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon 18 July officially labelled the catastrophic situation a famine and UN organizations, including those based in Geneva, are scrambling to provide more aid, rapidly.
Links to operations update and donors pages for some organizations:
- ICRC, International Red Cross
- IOM, International Organization for Migration
- UNHCR, UN High Commissioner for Refugees
- Chaine de bonheur, known in English as Swiss Solidarity, is a Swiss foundation that works with Swiss Public Broadcast Corporation and Swiss humanitarian and charitable organizations to organize major fundraising drives. The funds are then shared by several organizations. The current on to help fight the famine in Somalia has raised nearly CHF2.3 million in 10 days, but more is needed, the group says.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees FRiday 8 July called on governments and other donors to come up with $136.3 million in emergency funds to help the rapidly growing number of Somali refugees. The funds should cover the needs of some 90,000 new refugees heading to Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. They are fleeing what the UNHCR calls “deteriorating conditions and growing displacement from Somalia” due to drought and fighting.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, is flying to Ethiopia for a two-day inspection of one of the areas where Somalis are fleeing: 25 percent of the population of 7.5 million is now displaced, the UNHCR warns, with 54,000 people fleeing violence compounded by severe drought, in June alone. Most are fleein to Ethiopia and Kenya.
“Malnutrition rates among Somali refugee children arriving in Ethiopia and Kenya are alarmingly high and on a scale not seen in decades,” the Geneva-based organization said in a statement 6 July.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Italy has reacted angrily after France stopped trains at the Ventimiglia-Menton border for several hours Sunday 17 April, to prevent North Africans entering the France. Italy has given temporary visas to thousands of Tunisians, according to the BBC, in the wake of the overthrow of Tunisia’s government, despite both Italy and France stepping up measures to stem the flow of immigrants from North Africa. The visas issued by Italy allow them to travel throughout the Schengen area, Italy says, under European Union rules, but France argues that they must show they can support themselves.
The Italian ambassador in Paris was instructed by his foreign minister to tell the French government of the “strong” protest by Italy to the halt, undertaken by the prefecture in France’s Alpes-Maritimes region. Italy insists the temporary visas are in line with EU regulations.
Italy has been negotiating with Tunisia over terms for repatriating illegal immigrants, including how to keep the returns low key to avoid too much publicity.
16 refugees drowned, 5 went missing just 2km from Yemen’s shores
The UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) in Geneva last Friday issued sharp words to ships at sea who ignore troubled refugee boats, after the latest incident in which 16 people drowned and five went missing after an overcrowded boat from Somalia sank off the coast of Yemen. The survivors say they appealed to a passing cargo ship that ignored them. The UNHCR has previously said the number of such incidents, in the Gulf of Aden but also in the Mediterranean, may be increasing and Friday it appealed to shipmasters “to uphold the longstanding tradition of rescue at sea and helping vessels in distress.”
Links to other sites: BBC, Le Monde, Courriere della sera (Eng) and Courrierre front page (Ita)
6oth birthday for UNHCR says stateless, displaced are 21st c challenges
The UNHCR has offered the world a magnificent gift as part of its 6oth anniversary: a collection of some of its finest photos showing refugees from around the world, 1950-2010. The complete collection can be viewed on GenevaLunch
Refugees from Kosovo in F.Y.R Macedonia, 1999 (photo ©2010, UNHCR / R LeMoyne)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Sixty years ago today, 14 December 1950, the United Nations General Assembly voted into being a refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, to deal with the refugee situation in Europe in the aftermath of the second world war. It opened its doors in Geneva in January 1951.
Its first major international emergency, taking it beyond the original mandate, came in 1956, as thousands fled when Soviet forces crushed the Hungarian Revolution.
Vietnamese boat people, 1978 (photo ©2010, UNHCR / K Gaugler)
The work of the organization has changed to keep pace with the times: in the 1960s, the decolonization of Africa produced “the first of that continent’s numerous refugee crises needing UNHCR intervention,” the Geneva-based group notes in a statement issued for the anniversary. “Over the following two decades, UNHCR had to help with displacement crises in Asia and Latin America. Today it deals with major displacement situations around the world. The global population of refugees, internally displaced people, and asylum seekers stands at 43 million people, most of them under UNHCR’s duty of care.” The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded twice to the UNHCR, in 1954 and 1981.
The German freighter, Beluga Fortune, has been captured by Somali pirates almost 2,000km off the coast of Kenya, authorities said 24 October. The raid comes a day after a Greek tanker ship was seized off the coast of Momabasa, Kenya with a crew of 17 aboard.
The Beluga Fortune was carrying a load from the United Arab Emirates to Richards Bay, South Africa when it was boarded. It was not immediately known how many crew members were on board.
Links to other sites: Press Association, RTT News
Foreign ministers from African Union (AU) countries are expected to back a move that would see the number of troops and amount of military hardware increased for AU peacekeepers in Somalia. The change in mandate for Amisom from peacekeeping to “peace enforcement” is designed to “engage Al Shabaab” militants, but “upon approval by the AU Summit the issue will be discussed jointly by the AU Security Council and the United Nations Security Council before an enforcement force can be put together,” according to The East African/allAfrica 26 July. Uganda and Burundi currently supply the bulk of the 6,300 troops that make up Amisom.
The US Africa Command (Africom) leader, General William Ward, said last week when addressing African specialists at a think tank in Washington, that the US could provide more support, and that Africom is gaining more acceptance from African countries. “African nations have been reluctant to host Africom due to suspicions of American intentions as well as fears that a US military installation would invite attacks,” reports The East African in a separate article. “At the same time, Africom is moving to expand its operations — not in the form of uniformed US troops, but through private contractors who will assist in efforts to safeguard American interests in Africa.”
Alixandra Fazzina, winner of the UNHCR Nansen award
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – British photojournalist Alixandra Fazzina has been named the winner of the Nansen Refugee Award given annually since 1954 by Geneva-based UNHRC (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) to an individual “for outstanding work on behalf of refugees.”
The award carries CHF100,000 donated by the Swiss and Norwegian governments, to be donated to a refugee organization selected by the winner.
Fazzina began her photojournalism career following the British Army in Bosnia for two years, after which she began to record the lives of refugees.
She spent two years in Somalia chronicling the exodus of migrants and refugees from Somalia to the Arabian Peninsula and the smuggling business in the Gulf of Aden. The book which came out of this work will be published in September 2010, A Million Shillings, Escape from Somalia.
UNHCR, on announcing the award, noted that:
Over the last ten years Alixandra Fazzina has tirelessly documented the plight of the uprooted through distinctive and moving photo reportages. Alixandra Fazzina’s work has taken her to Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia to cover human tragedies often neglected by mainstream media.
The award ceremony takes place in Geneva in October.
A sample of Fazzina’s work, refugees fleeing Somalia in 2007:
Refugees fleeing Somalia (photo ©2010 A Fazinna/UNHCR)
Heavy shelling broke out in the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu, Sunday 16 May, as the parliament met for the first time this year. Reports vary. of 13 to 24 people dying in the fighting. The Islamist opposition called for the Western-backed government to step down.
Links to other sites: AllAfrica, Aljazeera, BBC, National Post, Canada
UNHCR in Geneva says situation dire, Swiss government issues travel black list
Bern / Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government Wednesday morning 13 May approved an embargo against Somalia, stopping military exports and freezing assets, as well as issuing a black list banning travel to Switzerland of those on the list. The move comes in reaction to a rapidly deteriorating political situation in Somalia, with the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) issuing an urgent message from Geneva Wednesday morning.
In Geneva the UNHCR launched an urgent appeal for an additional $60,000 to handle a refugee situation that could quickly escalate.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is suspending operations in southern Somalia, it announced Wednesday 6 January, saying that a spate of attacks have made it too dangerous to work there. More than one million people in the region are going hungry, according to the WFP. Reuters NewsAlert says that children are likely to be hurt the most by the suspension, with a sharp increase in malnutrition to be expected. The news is yet another blow to the region, where humanitarian agencies have found it increasingly hard, they say, to continue their work and where years of drought have been exacerbated because expected rains never arrived in November.
Links to other sites: ENS News Service, Reuters AlertNet, UN World Food Programme
A blast in the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu, killed three cabinet ministers and at least 18 other people Thursday 3 December, although AllAfrica, picking up the story from a UN humanitarian newsletter which cites a hospital source, puts the figure at 50 dead. The authors of the crime remain a mystery. A bomb exploded during a medical school graduation ceremony and suspicion quickly fell on an Islamist group, al Shabaab, but the group has denied it was involved. The extremist group has been locked in a power struggle with the Western-backed government, which the extremists accused of masterminding the blast, pointing out that the government itself has deep rifts. The US has called al Shabaab a proxy for al Qaeda in the region and Reuters reports that “Western security agencies say Somalia has become a safe haven for militants, including foreign jihadists, who are using it to plot attacks across the impoverished region and beyond.”
Canadian freelance journalist Amanda Lindhout and Australian photojournalist Nigel Brennan were freed Wednesday 25 Novmber after 16 months in captivity in Somalia, where both say they were tortured physically and mentally. Lindhout described her ordeal by phone to the Globe & Mail, saying that in her mind she escaped to Vancouver. Both say their families paid ransoms to the groups who abducted them.
Links to other sites: Canadian TV video, Herald Sun, Australia
Foreign Minister Carme Chacón said Wednesday that she will propose to EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels next Monday and Tuesday that the EU’s anti-piracy campaign in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Somalia, Operation Atalanta, change its strategy, and that it blockade three ports that she says are the source of the pirate attacks in the area. Somali pirates use “mother ships” to travel vast distances to attack freighters in the shipping lanes joining Europe with Asia.
Somali pirates are currently holding 12 ships, including one Spanish ship, the Alakrana, with 36 crew aboard, captured 2 October. Two days later, A Spanish ship captured two presumed pirates who are being tried in Spain. From Somalia the pirates have demanded that they be released as part of a deal to release the ship and the crew. Spanish officials have said that one option would be to sign a prisoner exchange agreement with the Somali provisional government, which would allow the two pirates to serve out their sentence in Somalia, once they have been sentenced. AFP, El Pais (Spa)
The US embassy in Pretoria and consulates and other offices, including development aid offices, were closed 22 September due to a security threat. The source of the threat was not revealed by embassy spokesperson Sharon Hudson Dean. South African national police commissioner Bheki Cele told reporters in Cape Town, “Our intelligence world is dealing with it. It is under control.” A state department spokesman in Washington asked US citizens to be vigilant when in the vicinity of US government offices.
US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed simultaneously in 1998 with the loss of 224 lives and many more wounded. US military forces last week killed one of the main suspects in those attacks in a helicopter raid in Somalia. Militant Islamists fighting the Western-backed government in Somalia vowed revenge on the US for that attack. BBC, Mail&Guardian, South Africa
The Somali militant Islamist group, al Shabaab, holding a French security contractor since July, have said they will release him if France stops supporting the Western-backed government. They also demand the withdrawal of African Union peacekeepers, “especially the Burundians”, from the country, and an end to French anti-piracy patrols in the sea off the coast of Somalia. The French security contractor was kidnapped from his hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia along with a colleague, who managed to escape 26 August, and is now in France.
The demands come three days after US forces killed four men in the south of the country in a helicopter raid. The militants are battling a weak central government, which is struggling to hold onto parts of Mogadishu. Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991. BBC, Reuters
A military raid on a car carrying suspected Islamist militants in southern Somalia has likely killed Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Kenyan-born man officials say was a senior member of al-Qaeda in Eastern Africa. Nabhan is believed to be responsible for a bomb attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya in 2002 which killed 15 people, and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger plane flying out of Mombasa later that year. He may also have been involved in the US embassy bombings in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania in 1998.
Witnesses say six helicopters flew into the Barawe district in southern Somalia, 250km south of the capital Mogadishu, which is controlled by Al-Shabaab rebels fighting for supremacy in Somalia. Two fired missiles on the car. At least four bodies were removed and two wounded people were taken away by the helicopters’ crew. Al-Jazeera, AllAfrica, BBC, GaroweOnline
A plane carrying 37 people reportedly remains under tight surveillance at Nairobi’s international airport in Kenya since it arrived late Saturday 5 September from the Seychelles, carrying what Kenya is calling pirates, and the government is negotiating with the Seychelles and Somali governments over the fate of the plane and its occupants. Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper says the “pirates” had been released by the Seychelles government, but there is no explanation of why they were held by the Seychelles, and it notes that the passengers “were scheduled to disembark from the plane and enter Nairobi from where they would have either sneaked back into Somalia or remained in the country to enjoy their ill-gotten riches.” Background, “Who is fighting whom in Somalia”, Irin humanitarian news
Pirates holding a Taiwanese-flagged ship since 6 April off the coast of Somalia fired on a US Navy helicopter that was monitoring it, 26 August. The US Navy says that the helicopter was not hit and the crew did not return fire. The Win Far was captured 6 April and has been used by the pirates to launch attacks on other ships, most notably the US-flagged Maersk Alabama. That attack ended when Navy snipers killed three of the pirates holding the American captain. The coast off Somalia, which has had no functioning government since 1991, is particularly prone to piracy, according to the International Maritime Bureau which montitors piracy world-wide.
Police in Melbourne, Australia swooped on 19 properties around the city and arrested four men they say were plotting to storm Holsworthy army base northwest of Sydney with automatic weapons and kill as many soldiers as possible until they themselves were killed. The men, Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese origin, are believed to be linked to militant Islamist group Al-Shabaab in Somalia, which is battling the Western-backed government. More than 400 police officers were involved in the early Tuesday 4 August operation. One of the men, Nayef El Sayed, aged 25, appeared in court and has been charged with terrorism offenses. A fifth man, arrested earlier for other reasons, was still being questioned. CNN, Sydney Morning Herald
Image ©2008 E Hockstein/UNHCR, on flickr.com
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Over 204,000 people have fled their homes in the northern suburbs of Mogadishu, Somalia to escape fighting since Islamist militants began their campaign eight weeks ago to gain control of the city, according to Geneva-based UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). Local groups working with the UN agency say that fighting has claimed 105 lives and 380 wounded in the past week.
