Baidoa, May 02, 2009, 1:00PM-ET,(SOMINA)- Hostilities did not end with the ouster of the military regime in Somalia in 1990, clan feuds and factional green zones have emerged in the country and in that case, civil strives left many people dead, many were injured and many more sought refuge in the neighboring countries. 

Civilians who bore the brunt of the civil war still suffer, some of them lost important parts of their bodies and changed their normal ways of lives, but still struggle to adopt the lessons they learned from living in a country like somalia. 

Baidoa, 250Km, south of the country's capital Mogadishu is one of the worst towns that civil wars engulfed, it was once named "the city of death" a name it gained in 1992 when human catastrophes in the region reached in the highest level. Several hundreds of people died daily in the town of starvation and diseases, in addition to the civil strives. 

Husein Hasan Mursal, one of the persons with disability who lost their limps in the wars, people like him are the most vulnerable that live in Somalia. 

 " They include mothers, children, elderly people and young ones who have no proper shelters and cannot flee from the wars without getting assistant from others,"  Mr Mursal, who had serious injuries in the spinal code left him disable told SOMINA in Baidoa. 

Mr. Mursal chairs an organization that advocates disable persons in Baidoa, and his organization has 1000 disable members including women and children. 

"I lost my both eyes and my right hand in the war, I'm a mother who lives a low level life with no assistant from anyone," Fadumo Abdi, a mother in Baidoa who lost her eyes in 1991 said. 

"We are disable and cannot work for our own, we depend on what others contribute to us," she added.  

Somalia has been lack of affective central government since 1991, and in that case, none cared about the persons with the disabilities, and they kept being survivals in the community.  

Dr:Mohamed Ali Ibrahim is the disabilities minister of the national unity government of Somalia, he says his ministry is underlining plans to assist the disable persons, but barriers could always be ahead of his ambitions. Very limited budged plans that the government allocated his ministry could be number-1 obstacle.  

"My ministry is planning moves to assist those wars left disable, we will specially focus on people who recently lost their limbs during the heavy wars that occurred when Ethiopian forces entered the country" Mr: Ibrahim said. 

"Those people gave up their hopes for the normal lives and that is what we need to bring back in their lives," he told SOMINA. 

The minister also said that the government is trying to register all people with disabilities where ever in the country they live, so that they can start assisting them.  

Something to feed is not the only thing the disable people in Somalia are lacking, their children have not also education opportunities like others and they remain at home. 

"The children of the disable persons don't go to schools and we don't have the same education opportunity that others can get, so that, we need the national unity government to support us and give education opportunities to our children," he explained.  

Mortar shells, heavy artilery used by the warring sides and undetonated substances in the areas where they fought are the main reasons given for the increased number of disable persons in the country. 

Photo: (c) SOMINA  

MX-MF-AM/MA