United Nations diverts aid from Somalis to Kenyans

09 January, 2008

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The United Nations has diverted aid intended for refugees from anarchic Somalia to help Kenya, a country which until less than two weeks ago was widely seen as a bastion of stability in a turbulent region.

About 500 people have died and at least 255,000 fled their homes in Kenya since chaos erupted after the disputed December 27 election, leaving aid agencies struggling to help the homeless.

"We have shifted 24 tonnes of blankets and soap from our warehouses in Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya ... they are now here in Nairobi," Emmanuel Nyabera, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said on Wednesday.

Dadaab houses refugees from the conflict in Somalia, where Ethiopian and transitional government troops are fighting Islamist insurgents.

Nyabera said the agency would start distributing to families in various parts of Nairobi, where riots and political killings, mostly in the slums, have left many homeless.

Thousands of women and children have been camping on open ground in Nairobi after gangs forced political rivals and other ethnic groups from their neighbourhoods and torched houses.

"Considering that Kenya has played host to refugees for years and years, we thought it our obligation to also intervene in the Kenya humanitarian situation," Nyabera said.

Kenya's Red Cross was distributing food on Wednesday to more than 30,000 people in and around the city of Eldoret in the Rift Valley, which has been worst hit by violence.

That brings the number of people in the area who have received food aid to more than 70,000, said Marcus Prior, spokesman for the U.N. World Food Programme which is supplying the food.

UNHCR workers in Nairobi are busy packing 10,000 family aid packages sufficient for 50,000 people for distribution in the Rift Valley later this week.

But UNHCR needs supplies for another 50,000 people, said Millicent Mutuli, regional information officer at UNHCR.

"We're now looking at various options for bringing in additional supplies," Mutuli told reporters.

"Among those options is a possible airlift from our emergency stockpile in Dubai, or we have another stockpile in Tanzania, or possibly looking at local purchase. Whichever will be faster will be the option we go with," she said.

U.N. agencies have long used Kenya as an operational hub to help volatile neighbouring states. But officials from the world body have expressed concern that the crisis in Kenya could cut a humanitarian lifeline to hundreds of thousands of refugees.

(Additional reporting by Alistair Thomson; editing by Janet Lawrence)