Kenya faces a looming humanitarian crisis in the north where camps for Somalis fleeing war in their country have reached bursting point, the U.N. refugee agency has warned.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) plans to launch a major appeal this month, and it has asked the Kenyan government to urgently provide more land for new camps.

Liz Ahua, UNHCR's Kenya representative, said 228,000 refugees were living in "intolerable conditions" crammed into three dusty, makeshift camps which were only intended to hold 90,000 people.

Ahua warned that another 80,000-120,000 could arrive next year if the situation in Somalia does not improve.

The camps are in Dadaab, an arid area 80km (50 miles) from the border. Kenya formally closed the frontier in 2007, but thousands continue to cross every month.

"In Kenya today we're facing a humanitarian crisis with regard to the number of Somali refugees we've been receiving since the beginning of the year," Ahua told AlertNet.

"All the camps are bursting. The services are inadequate. We do not have sufficient land. We're afraid that if there is an outbreak of disease we will be incapable of providing any support for the simple reason that there are too many people living in a small space."

Ahua said their greatest fear was an outbreak of cholera which would create a massive crisis overnight because of the way the disease spreads.

PRESSURE ON KENYA

She was speaking in London where she met British government officials and politicians to raise awareness of the crisis ahead of the UNHCR appeal.

Ahua said she also wanted the international community to put pressure on Kenya to provide another 2,670 hectares (6,600 acres) to build more camps.

The refugees live in flimsy dwellings made of sticks covered in plastic sheets. They receive basic foodstuffs but no meat. UNHCR says shelter, sanitation, water rations and schooling in Dadaab are all below international standards for refugee camps.

Ahua said the UNHCR was keen to move refugees into more permanent shelters made of iron sheeting but money was tight.

Kenya closed the border with Somalia in January 2007 to block fleeing fighters after Somali and Ethiopian government troops ousted Islamists who had ruled the capital Mogadishu and swathes of southern Somalia for six months.

But Ahua said 85,000 refugees had arrived since then, 60,000 of them this year.

Many have travelled hundreds of miles to reach Dadaab. Ahua told of one woman who had spent three months trudging from Mogadishu to the Kenyan border with her baby and six other children after gunmen killer her husband.

Ahua said another 40,000 Somalis had fled to Yemen this year and more than 8,000 to Djibouti. Inside Somalia, the number of internally displaced people has risen to 1.3 million - three times the number seen in recent years.

Some of the refugees in Dadaab have been there since 1991 when warlords toppled Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, tipping the country into the anarchy that has engulfed it ever since.

The camps also host refugees from Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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