Red Cross appeals for Somalia aid

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The International Red Cross has launched an appeal for $15m (£7.5m, 11m euros) for Somalia after some of the worst fighting in over a decade.

Severe floods, droughts and recent fighting means that the population is more reliant on aid, the group said.

Aid groups estimate some 1,300 people have died and thousands have fled since fighting escalated in March.

The UN World Food Programme said it had carried out its first distribution of aid in Mogadishu since the flare-up.

Somalia has been without an effective national government for 16 years, controlled by rival militias and awash with guns.

An insurgency flared after Ethiopian-backed government forces defeated Islamist fighters in an offensive at the end of last year.

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WFP country director Peter Goossens said that it was civilians who were bearing the highest cost of the civil war.

"These people are exhausted," he said from Nairobi.

"Most of them are women and they were either forced to flee their homes with their children during the recent fighting or they stayed in the city through the worst bombardments."

The WFP said it had distributed food to some 16,000 residents already and hoped the number would reach 114,000 by the end of the week.

The ICRC said it had been delivering safe drinking water to people living on the outskirts of the capital for the past three months.

It said some 3,000 people injured during the fighting had also been treated.