By Aweys Osman Yusuf

Mogadishu, 4 May 2007 - Hundreds of internally displaced families who returned to the capital have been deprived of resettling their makeshift camps, government compounds in the capital. Early this week the government intercepted refugees from going back to government buildings where they lived in for the past 15 years following the fall of former dictator, Mohammed Siad Barre.

Somalia's internally displaced people fled central and southern provinces of the country after repeated droughts and clan wars. Most of them were farmers and animal herders.

Safi Farah, a mother of seven children, told Shabelle Friday that the fighting in the capital forced her and her family to be forsaken under the trees in Afgoi district, 30 km south of the capital. She said they returned to Mogadishu and were refused to settle Shirkole compound where she and her family lived in before the fighting. Shirkole, in south Mogadishu, housed former central government's police officers.

"My children and I have been living under a tree in Afgoi and now that we returned, there are government soldiers who prevented us from going back to our former home. I really don't know what to do and where to settle. We are once again abandoned in the streets," she said.

The Somali government made the decision without planning any settlements for the refugees coming back to Mogadishu.

Mohammed Dhere, the new Mogadishu mayor and governor, told journalist early this week that there are some government buildings that are not necessarily wanted currently. "Refugees living there will not be forced to vacate until we would need them, but they should think about where they would settle," he said.

The Somali government took full control of the capital late last month after Ethiopian forces backing the Somali troops defeated remnants of the Union of Islamic Courts that administered most of Somalia for six months.

Source: Shabelle Media Network