The U.N. refugee agency, acting on a request by Kenya, has temporarily suspended the evacuation of refugees fleeing from violence in Somalia and pouring into neighbouring Kenya. "We are trying to improve the registration system and (Kenya's) government wants to get more involved in vetting the people coming in," Emmanuel Nyabera, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said by telephone on Saturday. "There are people trying to cheat the system by trying to get second ration cards so they can benefit twice from food and non-food items," Nyabera told Reuters. Last week the United Nations appealed for $35 million to provide food and other urgent supplies for the Somali refugees. Some 34,000 have entered Kenya so far this year and the influx could reach 80,000 by year-end, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement. In all, 160,000 Somalis are living in three refugee camps in Dadaab in northeastern Kenya and 22 percent of the children under age five among them suffer acute malnutrition, it said. UNHCR said it was still making preparation for new arrivals from Somalia and that evacuations could begin again soon. "We are still in a position to accommodate new arrivals in the three camps in Dabaab," Nyabera said. "We have deployed more staff to ensure the genuine asylum seekers are accommodated."
