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UN:
SOMALIA: UNICEF URGES SAFE ACCESS TO HELP WOUNDED CHILDREN AND WOMEN:
07/12/2007 (MaximsNews Network)
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UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network /
- 07 December 2007 --
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
today urged all sides to the current conflict raging in Somalia’s capital
Mogadishu to allow safe access for women and children across checkpoints so they
can receive life-saving medical care.
“UNICEF
is deeply concerned and distressed that checkpoints and roadblocks are posing an
additional challenge to wounded or sick children and women as they try to get
medical assistance,” said the agency’s Representative to Somalia, Christian
Balslev-Olesen.
In a
press release, UNICEF said that it has heard reliable reports that children,
adolescents, pregnant women and mothers – some of whom have sustained injuries
by shells and stray bullets – are being turned back at checkpoints while
trying to reach health posts.
Those
who have not been allowed to cross the checkpoints include women requiring
antenatal and post-natal care and many children urgently needing medical care
for conditions such as diarrhoea, the agency reported.
“To be
denied access to basic health services in such critical circumstances greatly
compounds the distress of the children and women who are amongst those most
heavily affected by the current conflict – fighting that has left many
children killed, maimed, displaced and orphaned,” Mr. Balslev-Olesen noted.
Additionally,
doctors, nurses and other medical practitioners are also prevented from reaching
their workplaces to help those in need.
These
checkpoints also hinder children from attending schools, which could provide
shelter and serve as a safe space. Some 80 per cent of all Mogadishu schools
have been closed due to the capital’s dangerous environment.
Due to
the violence, an estimated 600,000 people have fled Mogadishu, Jennifer Pagonis
of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said late last month.
The city
is also now home to over 40,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), the agency
reported.
Labels: United
Nations, U.N.,
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