Somalia’s interim federal government on Friday warned foreign ships against dumping toxic wastes off the country’s coasts.

Mohammed Osman Ali Dhagah-tur, the general director of Somalia’s ministry of air, ground and maritime transport, said they had received complaints from residents of seaside Mogadishu neighborhoods of dozens of dead fish floating offshore every day.

The Somali government is taking steps to learn what caused the deaths of the fish, Dhagah-tur told reporters while visiting Jazeera, a coastal village southwest of Mogadishu.

“There are vessels, which customized to bring factories’ poisonous remnants and unload to our porous coast. We could no longer tolerate vessels from other countries to come to our coasts and dump toxic waste off Somalia coasts,” the official noted.

He said the government has data showing the sea waters are contaminated, causing the death of large numbers of fish. Dhagah-tur added that if the contamination continues, it may bring about both social and environmental consequences, referring to Somalis, who consume large amounts of seafood.

Mohamed Ali, a resident in Jazeera, told All Headline News that the sea smells awful, particularly at night.

“When I ever I come to the shore, I see a lot of fishes died in the sea, so we are calling for the government of Somalia to tackle this calamity,” Ali recounted.

In a related story, Benadir region fishermen complained about foreign warships operating off Somalia’s coasts to fight Somali pirates.

In a telephone conversation, Awil Salad, a fisherman, charged that when they caught a number of fish and sharks, foreign warships robbed them by cutting the boat’s net and taking it and the net’s contents.

“Sometime, they open fire on us as they close to shores. What they (warships) are doing is blatant looting of our natural resources. We are not pirates and we don’t know why fire us,” Salad stated.

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