Relief officials asked the U.S. military for more protection Saturday after a series of attacks on aid workers in the capital. Efforts to feed the hungry could be hurt if the attacks continue, they said.
Meanwhile, preliminary peace talks among Somalia's warring factions have broken off in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, amid accusations of cease-fire violations and the killing of civilians in central Somalia, U.N. spokesman Farouk Mawlawi said.Bandits attacked aid workers five times in broad daylight within an hour Friday in northern Mogadishu, firing on vehicles of UNICEF, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Save The Children and Swedrelief, a Swedish agency.
One Swedish doctor and three Somali aid workers were injured, and a relief vehicle was looted.
Ian MacLeod, a spokesman for UNICEF, said security in northern Mogadishu has not improved since international forces arrived in December to get food past looters in a country where famine and civil war claimed 350,000 lives last year.
The attacks could hobble UNICEF aid to 25 feeding centers and 20 medical clinics and the vaccination of children, he said.
"UNICEF activities will continue in north Mogadishu but it will be increasingly difficult to undertake those if there is not more security provided," said MacLeod, whose agency is the largest operating in the capital's north.
A U.S. military spokesman, Army Lt. Col. Steve Ritter, said he was not aware of the UNICEF request for more security, and he took issue with MacLeod's contention that security in the north hadn't improved since the Marines arrived.
"There are a lot fewer guns on the street and incidents of gunfire," Ritter said. He said troops go out on as many as 30 patrols every day in Mogadishu.
The northern half of Mogadishu is controlled by forces loyal to Ali Mahdi Mohamed. The southern half is held by perhaps the country's most powerful figure, Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The warlords have been fighting for two years but reconciled publicly last month under U.S. pressure.
They were among representatives of 14 factions who signed a cease-fire and disarmament agreement on Jan. 8 that called for a national reconciliation conference to convene on March 15.
A committee opened talks on Friday to determine the agenda for the conference and who could participate. But the talks broke down when one faction accused another of attacking two villages in central Somalia shortly after the truce was signed, said Mawlawi, the U.N. spokesman.
Col. Serge Labbe, the commander of the Canadian forces in Somalia, said 80 Canadian troops were sent to one of the villages, Mataban, and that the situation there was calm.