CAIRO: Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan landed in Mogadishu on Friday as the first major international leader to visit the famine stricken Somali capital in nearly two decades. His visit comes as Somalia continues to battle a devastating famine that has seen tens of thousands of people die as a result and over 100,000 flee the country in an effort to find assistance. Somalia is the worst affected country in the Horn of Africa and has been officially declared a famine by the United Nations in five regions in the country, including Mogadishu itself. Erdogan, who is being accompanied by four ministers, was to tour a camp for the displaced and a hospital in Mogadishu, where more than 100,000 people have fled to recently to seek relief from the drought, his press office said on Friday morning. The visit follows Wednesday's meeting in Istanbul by members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation who pledged to donate 350 million dollars to assist the drought- and famine-stricken Somalis. Security was tightened in Mogadishu, a city that has been battered by bloody insurgency by the Al Qaeda-affiliated Shebab rebels fighting to unseat the Western-backed Somali government. Passengers on a plane carrying a delegation accompanying Erdogan had a narrow escape when they landed at Mogadishu airport as the right wing of the aircraft scraped the runway, according to Turkey's Anatolia news agency. No one was injured from the delegation which includes business leaders, lawmakers, musicians and security guards, Anatolia said. The al-Shabab earlier this month withdrew from Mogadishu in what they said was a tactical move, but vowed to continue fighting. Aid agencies have warned that the whole of southern Somalia could be hit by famine in the coming weeks. The UN's food monitoring unit has described Somalia as facing the most severe humanitarian crisis in the world and Africa's worst food security crisis since the country's 1991-1992 famine. BM
