Somalia's al Shabaab militants said they had banned Muslim aid agency Islamic Relief from areas under their control, depriving 1.3 million people of food, clean water and health care.
Islamic Relief, one of few international aid agencies able to work in al Shabaab-run areas, said it had not been notified by the rebels that its permit had been revoked and that a ban would also threaten access to areas under Government control.
The al Qaeda-linked insurgents have pulled out of many urban strongholds in southern and central Somalia. They still hold sway over vast rural areas.
"Islamic relief was found to be covertly extending the operations of banned organisations, particularly WFP," al Shabaab said on Twitter, referring to the United Nations' food agency, World Food Programme (WFP).
Iftikhar Ahmed Shaheen, Islamic Relief's regional director, said: "We have no programme, as far as I am aware, funded by WFP."
The militants, who abandoned their last urban stronghold of Kismayu late last month after an assault by Kenyan and Somali troops, expelled the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from parts of the country under its control in January.
That followed the expulsion of WFP which has had no access to areas under al Shabaab's control since January 2010. Locals and relief organisations accuse al Shabaab of blocking emergency food aid during a famine in 2011 that ravaged southern Somalia.
WFP told Reuters it had not been working directly or indirectly with any other aid group in rebel-controlled territory in Somalia since then.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article