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 MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - A cholera outbreak in Somalia has killed more than 115 people and hospitalized 724 in towns where people were forced to use contaminated water from a flooded river, doctors said Wednesday. More violence hit the capital, a day after the president ruled out talks with a moderate leader of Somalia's ousted Islamic movement, a setback for efforts to hold broad reconciliation talks in the war-torn country.
Tests conducted by the international medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontiers confirmed the cholera outbreak in towns along the Shabelle river. The river flooded earlier this year, leaving tens of thousands homeless in a country with little ability to respond because it lacks an effective government.
"At least 115 people, 53 of them children, have died from cholera in four districts in the last four weeks," said Dr. Abdulahi Hussein Malin, who works in a hospital in Jowhar, 55 miles north of Mogadishu.
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