A ship carrying Somali citizens escaping conflict in impoverished Yemen, including small children and some frail elderly, arrived in a Northern Somalia town on Wednesday as agencies fear rapidly rising influx, Horseed Media reports.
About 450 refugees including Ethiopian and Yemeni citizens arrived in Berbera town on the early morning hours, local officials said.
More than 2,000 Somali refugees from Yemen and other nationalities have landed in northern Somalia since the end of last month, according to humanitarian agencies.
The influx of refugees is likely only to grow. In a report, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies predicted that as many a million people now in Yemen could be expected to flee and that their most likely path out is by sea to Djibouti or nearby Somalia in the Horn of Africa.
The U.N. refugee agency said last week it was making contingency plans to support 30,000 Yemeni refugees in Djibouti and 100,000 in Somalia.
Tens of thousands of Somali citizens are still stranded in Yemen, many in conflict-zones, leaving family members thousand of miles away concerned for their safety. Somalia’s federal government has failed to implement its evacuation program pledge other countries have scrambled to evacuate their nationals.
While trouble has been brewing in the strategic Arab country for nearly five years, the turmoil grew into a full-blown regional conflict as Saudi Arabia started bombing Houthi rebels, who had forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee in February.
According to UN figures, more than 600 people have died and 2,000 have been wounded in the fighting.
The war in Yemen, pitting supporters of the president against Houthi rebels, has reversed the refugee flow in the region, which previously saw refugees flee the Horn of Africa for Yemen, where they accounted for nearly all the 250,000 refugees registered in the Gulf country.
Horseed Media
Over 400 arrive in Northern Somalia as Refugee crisis grows
Published: April 22, 2015
