By Andrew Cawthorne

NAIROBI, Sept 15 (Reuters). The flow of weak and hungry Somali refugees into Kenya has tripled to 300 a day amid fears of a flare-up of conflict around the port city of Kismayo, the United Nations said on Friday.

Some 22,000 Somalis have now fled into neighbouring Kenya since the start of the year when the latest round of conflict in the violence-plagued Horn of Africa nation began, the United Nations' refugee agency (UNHCR) said.

With pro-Islamist militia reported to be moving into Kismayo from the capital Mogadishu, the exodus across the porous Somalia-Kenya border gathered pace this week.

"An average of 300 Somali refugees have arrived in Kenya daily over the past three days amid reports of an advance on the southern Somalia port city of Kismayo by fighters allied to the Islamic Courts Union", UNHCR said in a statement.

"Most of the refugees now arriving in Kenya are women and children and many are in poor condition. They are tired and markedly emaciated after travelling on foot and aboard trucks over long distances and for many days".

Kismayo is controlled by an independent authority, but its militia is believed to be increasingly allied to the Islamists, who took Mogadishu and a swathe of southern Somalia in June.

The Islamist rise has dented the aspiration of an interim Somali government, based in the provincial town of Baidoa, to restore central rule for the first time since 1991.

Witnesses said some militia entered Kismayo on Thursday without any fighting. The local Juba Valley Alliance authority said they were its men, but a government envoy said the Islamists were taking Kismayo in a bid to extend their control.

"MORE ON THE WAY"

Most of the Somali refugees crossing to north Kenya go to the vast and dusty Dadaab refugee camps just over the border.

"The new arrivals report that more refugees are on the way", UNHCR said. "The rise in the number of Somalis escaping to Kenya, up from about 100 a day a month ago, has us worried that an outbreak of violence in Kismayo could trigger even more".

UNHCR said Somali refugees were also arriving from Mogadishu and Baidoa.

"Those coming from Mogadishu and Baidoa say they fear renewed clashes in those areas", it said.

"Others say they are leaving Mogadishu to avoid recruitment by warlords or the Islamic Courts Union".

The U.N. agency said it was sending trucks daily to pick up the arriving Somalis, as well as providing medical aid.

It was also working with the Kenyan government to expand the refugee sites in Dadaab, where some 134,000 Somalis live in flimsy, dome-shaped shacks or "tukuls" on arid, sandy terrain. They rely almost entirely on handouts at feeding centres.

As well as fleeing to Kenya, other Somalis have gone to Ethiopia's Ogaden region or north to Djibouti.

While numbers are just manageable at present in Dadaab, aid workers fear a war between the Islamists and the government could provoke a massive, uncontrollable exodus.

Reuters AlertNet

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