Violence and Hunger Surge in Baidoa as Children Face Growing Crisis

In recent weeks Baidoa, the largest city of Somalia’s South West State, has seen intense clashes between government forces and fighters loyal to the ousted regional president. Thousands of local fighters entered the city in September 2026, prompting fresh fighting that killed and injured children and damaged a health facility. UNICEF warned that children are bearing the heaviest burden of the violence and called on all parties to protect schools, health centres and to allow unhindered humanitarian access. The loss of civilian lives underscores the acute risk to vulnerable families already coping with multiple crises.

Baidoa’s food situation is dire. Across Somalia more than two million children are acutely or severely malnourished, making the country one of the world’s largest child‑malnutrition emergencies. In Baidoa alone, about 26,000 people are classified as facing catastrophic food insecurity, the highest level on the hunger scale. The crisis is compounded by an El Niño pattern expected to intensify the October‑December rainy season, raising concerns about further disruption to livelihoods. Families such as Hawo’s illustrate the hardship: after a mortar killed her father and her brother died in the fighting, she fled to Mogadishu, now eating only once a day while the local clinic turns women and children away due to resource shortages.

The World Food Programme’s capacity in Somalia has contracted sharply. While it once delivered food assistance to more than four million people each month, it now reaches just over 670,000 individuals monthly because of severe funding shortfalls. In 2022, generous contributions helped scale up assistance during the country’s longest drought in four decades, averting famine. Today, officials note that reduced resources force painful choices about who receives aid, and they warn that the combination of conflict, displacement and the looming El Niño could increase the number of families needing assistance, further straining health and nutrition services.