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Hamas donates $140,000 to Somalia
Published Tuesday 13/09/2011 (updated) 14/09/2011 09:35
A boy sits looking over the Seyidka settlement for the famine stricken internally
displaced people in Berkulan near Somalia's capital Mogadishu, September 6.
Famine has spread to six out of eight regions in southern Somalia, with 750,000
people facing imminent starvation, the United Nations said on Monday, and
hundreds of people are dying each day despite a ramping up of aid relief.
[Reuters/Ismail Taxta]
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The Hamas ministry of religious endowments in the Gaza Strip has donated $140,000 to the people of Somalia through the emergency and relief committee of Arab doctors.
The donation was announced during a ceremony on Tuesday at the ministry's office, which was attended by the chair of the Arab doctors committee Muhammad Aklouk and minister of endowments Salih Ar-Ruqab.
The Arab doctors' union launched a campaign in August to assist the Somali people "From Gaza hand in hand to save the children of Somalia."
The union opened bank accounts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to facilitate voluntary contributions to the Somali people.
The Horn of Africa has been hit by the worst drought in decades, and the UN has described Somalia, where a civil war has been going on since 1991, as facing the most severe humanitarian crisis in the world.
The United Nations says currently about 3.6 million people are now at risk of starvation in Somalia and about 12 million people across the Horn of Africa region, including in Ethiopia and Kenya.
Aid agencies are only able to get food aid to 1 million of those in need because the al Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab rebel group, which controls much of the south, will not allow food shipments in.
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