KEY DEVELOPMENTS
On December 29, unidentified assailants killed a refugee leader of the Community Peace and Security Team (CPST) at the Hagadera camp in the Dadaab refugee camp complex in Kenya. Assailants killed another CPST refugee leader at the Ifo camp in Dadaab on January 1, 2012. Humanitarian operations in Dadaab remain limited to the provision of essential services, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Attacks on aid workers continue across south and central Somalia, with a total of five aid workers killed over the past two weeks, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). On December 23, a gunman killed three aid workers, including two U.N. World Food Program (WFP) staff, in Mataban town, located in the Hiran Region of central Somalia. On December 29, a recently dismissed Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) employee shot and killed two international MSF staff at the organization’s compound in Mogadishu.
Despite overall improvements in nutrition conditions in drought-affected areas of Kenya since mid-2011, preliminary results from December U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) nutrition surveys in Mandera County indicate persistent malnutrition levels, with only a slight decrease compared to levels recorded in May, according to OCHA.
On December 31, more than 3,000 Government of Ethiopia (GoE) troops, Somalia Transitional Federal Government (TFG) soldiers, and allied local militia captured Beledweyne—located approximately 20 miles from the Ethiopia–Somalia border in central Somalia’s Hiran Region—from al-Shabaab militants, according to international media. Al-Shabaab militants also face Government of Kenya (GoK) soldiers in southern Somalia and African Union Mission in Somalia troops in Mogadishu.
