Some 150 delegates to the Somali peace talks in Nairobi have been evicted from their hotel for failure to pay bills amounting to 100 million Kenyan shillings (about $1.25 million), The East African Standard reported. The delegates, who have been at the hotel for over a year, have threatened to abandon the talks and return home. They called on IGAD (Inter-Governmental Authority on Development) to pay the hotel bills. Timothy Njaga, the hotel’s general manager, said an IGAD official had threatened to move the Somali delegates to other hotels. “Every month we sign contracts with IGAD. We invoice them weekly and they pay for a few people but suddenly, they stopped all payments,” said Njaga.
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The Swiss branch of the French organization, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has temporarily withdrawn from the southern Somali town of Dinsor for security reasons, an MSF official said. David Querol, the head of the MSF mission in Somalia, said four international volunteers were withdrawn from Dinsor after the discovery on May 12 of an explosive device concealed on their premises. Querol said the device appeared to have been placed there two days before its discovery. MSF-Switzerland operates a small hospital in the town which is 170 km west of Mogadishu. The agency employs 45 Somali staff at the hospital which will remain open after the withdrawal.
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Hundreds of Somali women and children have demanded medical assistance at the only hospital offering free medical care in Mogadishu. Media reports said hospital staff had gone on strike. The medical workers at SOS Hospital went on strike after 20 armed militiamen occupied hospital wards in late April demanding compensation for a woman whose uterus was removed in an operation to save her life. The armed men have remained in the hospital since then, hindering medical staff from doing their jobs. The woman’s relatives said she was as good as dead since she could no longer bear children. Elders are trying to mediate, but the woman’s family said the militiamen would continue to occupy the hospital until they had received 50 camels — the compensation traditionally paid for the death of a woman.
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A group of Somali militiamen crossed the border into Kenya this week and shot dead three Kenyans of Somali origin, police said on Tuesday. The militiamen from the Marehan sub-clan killed Mohammed Osman, Hassan Mohammed and Mohammed Maalim on Monday near the border, Kenyan police spokesman Jasper Ombati said. The dead men are believed to be part of the Marehan sub-clan whose members live in southern Ethiopia and northeastern Kenya.
The Marehans, under the umbrella of the divided Somali National Front (SNF), have been fighting to control the country’s southern Gedo region which borders Kenya since 1996.
