Aid organisations voiced alarm Friday over a displacement crisis in southern Ethiopia, warning that many of the hundreds of thousands who have fled inter-communal violence were living in places "unfit for human habitation". More than 800,000 people fled violence along the Oromia and Somali regions' border in the country's southeast last month alone, according the UN humanitarian agency.
That followed a first wave of people fleeing after fighting in the area first flared up in April, the agency said, adding that it remained unclear how many people in total had been displaced.
"The situation is extremely fluid," spokeswoman Vanessa Huguenin told AFP. The UN migration agency, IOM, said Friday that most of the freshly displaced were living without adequate shelter or safe sanitation, and warned the situation was being exacerbated by the onset of the rainy season.
"Walking for days to find safety, many sleeping out in the open along the way, the displaced communities have few if any possessions beyond the clothes they left in, and no food or money," IOM said in a statement.
Those who have recently fled their homes join nearly 1.8 million people already internally displaced within Ethiopia, it said.
Ethiopia's government and aid organisations are racing to provide aid and services to those gathered at the numerous displacement sites in the West Guji Zone of Oromia and Gedeo Zone of SNNPR.
IOM said many of the displaced were staying with relatives or had sought shelter in schools, government buildings or disused factories.
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