Conflict taking place in area also hit hard by food shortages due to drought
DAKAR (AlertNet) – All sides involved in fighting in northern Mali need to ensure that humanitarian groups have access to provide food and medical assistance to civilians fleeing or caught up in the conflict, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday.
Armed men prevented the ICRC from carrying out an operation to evacuate thousands of civilians who were trapped by fighting in the northern town of Tessalit earlier this week.
“We arrived there (Tessalit) on Monday in the evening but we found some armed persons who didn’t allow us to work but we don’t know which group they belong to,” said Germain Mwehu, a spokesman for the ICRC’s regional delegation, based in Niger.
“We were unable to evaluate the humanitarian situation and the needs of civilians in the town and it is the first time that this is happening since the conflict started,” he added on the phone from Niamey, Niger’s capital.
The ICRC said it would make another attempt to reach the town once it gets necessary security guarantees from all sides.
“It is important for the Red Cross and humanitarian organisations to have access to persons who need our help,” Mwehu said.
The northern garrison town of Tessalit, close to Mali’s border with Algeria, became the latest to fall to rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) who are seeking an independent home for the nomadic Tuareg people in northern Mali.
The MNLA, bolstered by heavily armed Malian Tuareg returning from fighting alongside pro-Gaddafi forces in Libya, started fighting government troops in January and have since gained swathes of territory.
More than 195,000 people have fled their homes since the conflict erupted, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Thursday.
OCHA says 100,000 of them have sought refuge in neighbouring Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Algeria.
Nearly 95,000 others are internally displaced in Mali where they face dire conditions and only a few aid agencies, including Medecins du Monde, Medecins Sans Frontieres, the Malian Red Cross and ICRC are able to reach them due to concerns about insecurity, according to OCHA.
“For those who have fled the fighting to areas which could be considered as safe…security, access to food and drinking water, sanitation remain daily concerns,” Juerg Eglin, head of the ICRC regional delegation in Niamey, said in a statement.
He said most of the host communities are not adapted to cope with such an influx of people, leaving the majority of the uprooted people staying in makeshift shelters on the outskirts of villages.
“It is vital that our teams come to their assistance without difficulty” Eglin added.
The ICRC and the Malian Red Cross started distributing food and household items to 28,000 internally displaced people in the northern region of Gao on Friday.
The conflict is taking place in an area that has been hit hard by food shortages due to drought brought on by erratic rainfall. Aid groups say the uprooted people are putting an extra burden on the depleted food resources of their host communities.
The ICRC plans to distribute food to 50,000 people in the Menaka area close to the border with Niger as part of its response to the drought-induced food shortages.
(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)
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