Word: somali
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...throng, which has been growing steadily, surges ahead. The red iron gates have eased open a crack, enough to let through a single file of supplicants. Inside, 12 Somali guards dressed in battle fatigues and armed with M-16 rifles issue orders. Wielding 3-ft. wooden switches, they herd the people into neat rows at the rear of a large earthen courtyard. In 30 minutes more than 2,000 people are seated on the ground while others stream in: nomad women wrapped in black shawls, grandmothers in tattered sackcloth, lone children naked but for a makeshift shirt. At one point...
...Somali nurse dressed in white coat and rubber sandals picks his way through the crowd to weed out the youngest, most desperate cases. Gathering them together in another part of the compound, he feeds each one a spoonful of antidiarrhea medicine from a rusty thermos bottle. Every child under five receives a plastic bracelet, which entitles the wearer to a protein biscuit in addition to a bowl of gruel. The bands are color coded; blue for severely malnourished; red for those on the verge of death...
According to U.N. experts, almost 300,000 Somali, Ethiopians, Sudanese and Ugandans have already reached Kenya; that number could double in a few months. One of the worst droughts in modern African history has added to the fear and hunger that warfare began. More than half the refugees are Somali, fleeing westward from continuous battles among their country's clans and subclans. From the north trek thousands of starving Ethiopians, and from the northwest Sudanese are fleeing from Khartoum's national army and the southern rebel forces it is pushing before...
...drug called kat, their fingers quick on the trigger. Makeshift hospitals dot the city; the existing ones were looted long ago. The wounded must bring their own beds, so most end up lying on the floor, a weeping relative holding aloft their intravenous solution -- when it is available. Somali doctors and foreign volunteers move so quickly from patient to patient that trails of blood pattern the floors...
...overthrown by a coalition of clan-based armies last January, he was replaced as President by Ali Mahdi Mohammed of the Hawiye clan in central Somalia. In September the new President's authority was challenged by General Mohammed Farrah Aidid, a fellow clansman and chairman of the ruling United Somali Congress. The President, meanwhile, has been trying to have Aidid ousted from his position as party leader. An estimated 500 people were killed in street fighting two months ago. Weapons flooded the city, and most urban males began carrying rifles. After a lull, the struggle resumed last week...