Fighting around border town Moyale: 36,000 people flee Ethiopia into Kenya
Security forces from the Oromia and Somali regions are clashing. Kenya's human rights commission speaks of 40,000 refugees and warns of disease.
Symbolic image · Photo: george kaguangi / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Around 36,000 people have fled fighting in southern Ethiopia into neighbouring Kenya, many of them women and children, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR. Security forces from the Oromia and Somali regions are clashing around the border town of Moyale, Ethiopia's Addis Standard reported. Moyale sits on the boundary between the two regions. Tensions over a flag dispute escalated after a 13-year-old was killed in an exchange of gunfire on Oct. 18.
The fighting has since spread to seven districts in southern Oromia. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) estimates that about 40,000 people have sought refuge in Moyale. More than 15,000 are in eight temporary shelters and more than 20,000 are staying with relatives and friends. UNHCR says food, drinking water, shelter, sanitation and medical services are the most pressing needs.
The commission called for an "urgent, coordinated" response and warned that rainfall could worsen sanitation and raise the risk of disease outbreaks. It urged authorities on both sides of the border to cooperate and address the causes of displacement. UNHCR is working alongside IOM, UNICEF, the World Food Programme and the Kenya Red Cross.