The United States said Thursday it was “saddened” to learn almost 260,000 people, half of them children, had died of hunger in Somalia, blaming Islamist militants for an “inhumane” block on aid.
“The United States is deeply saddened by the loss of life and human suffering caused by the 2011 to 2012 Somalia famine,” acting deputy State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said.
The causes “were complex and went beyond just poor rains, to include difficult economic, political, security and social issues,” he added.
The toll revealed in a new UN report is much higher than was feared at the time of the 2010-2012 food crisis in the troubled African country and also exceeds the 220,000 who starved to death in the 1992 famine.
Somalia was the hardest hit by the extreme drought in 2011 that affected over 13 million people across the Horn of Africa.
Half of those who died were children under five, according to the joint report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network.
The early warning system had given aid organizations a heads-up that a crisis was developing, helping to save many lives, Ventrell insisted.
But “Al-Shebab’s inhumane blockage of humanitarian assistance prior to and during the famine, including banning dozens of humanitarian organizations from providing lifesaving assistance, thwarted a more rapid international humanitarian response that could have saved even more lives.”
The radical Islamist militants had also refused “to allow affected populations to leave Al-Shebab-controlled areas” and “prevented them from seeking assistance elsewhere.”
Washington had supplied some $360 million in food aid to Somalia, Ventrell said, adding the US had “worked very vigorously in the face of this crisis.”
The Shebab, an Al-Qaeda linked group that once ruled large swathes of Somalia, has been severely weakened at the hands of African Union peacekeepers but still carries out deadly attacks, including in the capital.
US blames militants for Somali famine death toll
