UN agencies appeal for help for tsunami-affected communities

UN agencies appealed on Friday for immediate assistance to communities on the Somali coast that were affected by the earthquake-generated tsunami which devastated much of South Asia on 26 December.

"We need to act now and mobilise the needed resources," Wafaa El Fadil, a humanitarian affairs officer with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), who was in a UN assessment team that flew over some of the affected areas on Thursday, told a news conference in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

She said the team had seen "considerable damage to structures" in the Hafun peninsula, one of the worst affected areas on the Somali coastline. The aerial mission had also seen some damage to structures in Bender Beyla, she added.

El-Balla Hagona, the UN Development Programme's director for Somalia, said that unlike other affected countries in Asia, Somalia lacked the "indigenous capacity to assess the damage" caused by the tsunami.

"That has placed that responsibility on the UN and its collaborators," Hagona said.

The remoteness of the affected areas was making efforts to assess the damage and estimate the number of affected people difficult.

"The aerial survey has not provided a complete assessment," Balla said.

El Fadil described the affected areas as "remote and harsh". "Accessibility is an issue," she told IRIN, adding that it had not been possible to assess the effects of the tsunami on the livelihoods of Somali coastal communities yet.

Thomas Thompson, a logistics officer with the World Food Programme (WFP), who was also on the aerial assessment team, told the news conference that the tsunami had compounded the effects of a four-year drought that had already ravaged northern Somalia.

"There is need for us to act immediately," he added.

WFP has started food distributions in Hafun. The agency used two all-terrain trucks on Wednesday to transport the first 12 mt of food from Foar, where regular WFP lorries got stuck. The 60 km trip from Foar to Hafun took the four-wheel-drive vehicles seven hours through mud and water because the tsunami damaged the only road, the UN said in an update.

An estimated 114 people were killed in Somalia when the tsunami, triggered by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean, struck the Horn of Africa coastline on Sunday, according to relief workers and local authorities. About 10,000-15,000 affected people were in need of immediate assistance.

The newly created Somali government and authorities in the self-declared, autonomous northeastern region of Puntland appealed for international relief assistance on Tuesday.

There were reports of more displaced people in Bander Beyla, Baargaal and Eyl, according to OCHA, which was coordinating efforts to assist those affected. It said the most urgent needs included food, medicine, shelter materials, cooking utensils and clothes.

Sunday's tsunami waves also slammed into Tanzania, where at least 10 people, mostly children, died, police in the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, said.

In Kenya, authorities sealed off the beaches on Monday to prevent people from exposing themselves to the danger posed by the rushing waters. Sources said three people died, but police confirmed one. The beaches were later reopened.

Damaged infrastructure was also reported in the Indian Ocean islands of the Seychelles and Madagascar.

The tsunami, caused by an earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, hit coastal areas in the archipelago, as well as in Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, The Maldives, Malaysia and Myanmar, leaving a trail of death and destruction. Nearly 135,000 people are known to have been killed by the surging waves.