Families remaining in Hudur district, which has been cut off by conflict, say there is no food left in the markets and they are desperate. Ambiyo Ahmed Hassan, a 50-year-old mother of seven children, said Al-Shabaab had ordered the local business people to take all their goods and merchandise out of town before the Somali National Army and AMISOM forces took over the Somalia-Ethiopia border region.
“The business people took their food items to other towns and villages controlled by Al-Shabaab because they were told to do so and they couldn’t dare to defy,” Hassan told Radio Ergo’s local reporter in Badioa, by phone.
Hassan’s family is one of the few people who have dared to defy Al-Shabaab’s order to evacuate the town. They have been joined by a few by families who came back from Elbarde district, after fleeing Hudur when Ethiopian troops withdrew and Al-Shabaab captured the district last year.
“Al-Shabaab have blocked all the roads connecting Hudur to other towns and are refusing to let the vehicles enter the town,” the district’s chairman Mohamed Moalim told Radio Ergo.
It is estimated that 4,000 families are suffering a food crisis, as the prices of the very scarce food items left available in the town have more than doubled. Mohamed Hassan Abdirahman, a Hudur resident, said 50 kg of sugar had increased from 680 Somali shillings to 1.2 million shillings. A 50 kg sack of wheat flour and rice had also risen from 600 to 900 shillings.
Muhyadin Ahmed Roble/Muhyadin Hassan
