Al-Shabab says aid group ban remains in place

A shortage of rain =a shortage of food, but to members of Al Shabab do not see it that way.
So it is O.K. for the people of Somalia to starve and dehydrate, it is the Islamic way.

Islam and Al Shabab, the religion and people of ignorant rejects who would rather see their people die than receive help.

Al Jazeera
Two weeks after al-Shabab said a ban on certain aid groups working in Somalia would be lifted, the Islamist rebel movement has announced that the ban remains in place, the AFP news agency has said.

The group also rejected a United Nations declaration that parts of the country had been hit by the worst famine seen in the area for 20 years.

Al Shabab, which controls parts of the affected region, accused the UN of exaggerating the severity of the drought and using it as propaganda.

"Those earlier banned groups are not welcome to serve in our area of control," al-Shabab spokesperson Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage said in a broadcast on the Islamist Al Furqaan radio on Friday.

"There is drought in Somalia but not famine - what is declared by the UN is 100 per cent false."

"The declaration of famine is political and is a lie with hidden agendas," he added, saying only that there is "a shortage of rain".

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP), one of the aid groups banned by al- Shabab, said on Friday that it would fly aid into the capital "within days".

Somalia is the worst affected country in the drought-hit Horn of Africa region, where the UN says that more than 3.7 million people are at risk of starvation.