Gunmen Block Food Convoys in Somalia

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Gunmen and looters blocked food convoys to thousands of dying people Sunday as chaotic Somalia awaited the arrival of armed U.N. guards.

Trucks from the north of Mogadishu were ambushed crossing into the capital, preventing the U.N.’s World Food Program from moving any food out of the port.

Mogadishu Radio, which broadcasts in support of interim President Ali Mahdi Mohamed, said 30 people were killed in Baidoa as Mahdi’s forces fought those of his rival, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, after the theft of an international agency’s vehicle and some food aid.

The United Nations had sent two planeloads of food over the weekend to Baidoa, 150 miles northwest of the capital of Mogadishu.

Aid officials say hundreds of people are dying there daily, victims of the combined effects of drought and war. Officials said the United States is working to send 145,000 tons of food.

“So far, 30 men have been killed from both sides,” according to the report monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp. in London. “Eyewitnesses say the (pro-Aidid) bandit group has been completely driven out of Baidoa toward the east of the town.”

At Kismayu in the south, looters broke into the port area and made off with 250 tons of food, forcing the World Food Program to halt the unloading of a ship.

“They looted all the diesel fuel too, and now we have a problem of transport as well,” a U.N. official said.

“Today was a bad day,” said an aid worker in Mogadishu with Britain’s Save the Children Fund. “There are so many variables that have to be taken into account.”

“It is just bedlam at the port, a completely anarchic situation,” another aid worker said.

Two ships were unloading wheat, beans and rice in Mogadishu. But relief workers were unable to say when the food might reach the people who need it.

In Egypt on Sunday, Somali Foreign Minister Mohamed Ali Hamed pleaded for more relief food and more U.N. soldiers.

The United Nations has approved deploying a 500-man armed force to protect aid to Mogadishu.

But Hamed said at least 15,000 U.N. soldiers are needed and that “the aid that has already arrived provides only 10% of our actual needs.”

Brig. Gen. Imtiaz Shaheen, who heads a team of 50 U.N. cease-fire monitors in Mogadishu, said he was working on final preparations for the arrival of the 500 U.N. security guards.

He said logistic problems, such as accommodation, needed to be solved. He was unable to give a date for the guards’ arrival.

Several million people are in danger of starving in Somalia, which collapsed into a nightmare of violence after the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in January, 1991.