CARE INTERNATIONAL president Malcolm Fraser, who made a recent fact-finding visit to Somalia, has appealed for the UN peacekeeping force there to be increased to 15,000 and for deployment of about 500 observers in the country. He warned that unless UN aid workers receive adequate protection from marauding, local gunmen, a special 100-day humanitarian programme the UN is putting in place will fail.
In the key emergency food distribution centre of Bandera, 250-300 Somalis are dying every day, though Bandera is just a half-hour hop from Mogadishu, the capital and the port city where tonnes of food and medicine have been stockpiled by international agencies. About 2,50,000 Somalis could die by the year-end unless aid to the drought-stricken, war-ravaged country continues without disruption from local warlords, who have succeeded in exhorting recognition from UN officials.