More than 150 families displaced from Tiyeglow and its surroundings have settled in a new IDP camp on the outskirts of Baidoa.
The IDPs, who are mostly women and children, have been displaced by fighting between Al-Shabaab fighters and the Somali government troops in parts of Bakol region.
They pitched makeshift houses in the new camp, and cited insecurity as the major reason that forced them to flee their homes, leaving behind their livestock and farms.
Habiba Mohamed Aden, 40, fled with her four children. She told Radio Ergo she did not have food to give to her malnourished children.
“We are hit by rains, and we don’t have anywhere to shelter from it. In the last 24 hours, I didn’t cook any food for my children,” she said.
Radio Ergo’s local correspondent met another mother of seven children, Addey Abdi, 60, inside her makeshift home, made of sticks and scraps of cloth, where he saw some of Addey’s children crying because of hunger.
“Hunger, thirst and violence forced us from our homes, and here we don’t have shelter or something to eat,” she said.
Hawa Isaq Abdi, the chairlady of the camp, said they were facing appalling living conditions and appealed to aid agencies to provide humanitarian support for them.
“What we need most now are food and shelter. We came here escaping from violence and anticipated to be assisted, but no-one has yet come to our aid.”
She said the camp was far from the town, denying them the chance of finding any small-scale jobs to earn a living.
Hussein Ali Sheikh, one the IDPs from Biyoley village near Tiyeglow, said most of the people in the camp were women and children, because most of the men had fled to other areas due to security reasons.
