Child casualties rise significantly in Somalia, WHO says

The WHO on Tuesday said children under age 5 make up almost half of those injured in a recent upsurge of violence in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, AlertNet reports (Migiro, 5/31).

"Of the 1,590 reported weapon-related injuries in May alone, 735 cases or 46 percent were suffered by children under the age of five, compared to only 3.5 percent in April," the U.N. News Centre notes. "This is the highest number of injured children that has been reported since the beginning of this year," Marthe Everard, WHO's representative for Somalia, said in a statement, according to the news service (5/31). "The main types of injury are burns and shrapnel, blast injuries and bullets," Omar Saleh, a WHO trauma surgeon, said in an interview with VOA News (DeCapua, 5/31).