Six aid workers were kidnapped in Somalia today.

Two French humanitarian aid workers kidnapped at gunpoint last month have been released, aid group Action Against Hunger said today.

At least 200 civilians have been killed in two months of fighting between Sri Lankan soldiers and separatist Tamil rebels in the country’s north and east and both sides are to blame, European ceasefire monitors said today.

The Tamil Tiger rebels ruled out peace talks as battles raged in Sri Lanka’s north and east.

An international aid group said today it found the bodies of two more of its workers after discovering 15 others killed last week in Sri Lanka’s northeast, as a car bomb explosion outside a girls’ school left at least two people dead.

FIFTEEN Tamil civilians working for a French aid agency were found slain in north-eastern Sri Lanka after fierce battles between rebels and the government over water supplies, relief agency officials said yesterday.

ABOUT 200 desperate people pushed and fought each other for milk, bread and biscuits brought in by mule train yesterday.

IN Niger most of the 11 million people live on a dollar a day. Some 40% of children are underfed, and one out of four dies before turning five.

DONWEH BAR props up her skeletal frame, wizened beyond her 48 years, with spindly arms wrapped around a twisted cane. Nearby a toddler with protruding belly and ribs eats a few grains of corn meal from her mother's hand.

Government forces launched a major counterattack today on the key port of Buchanan, battling to take back Liberia’s second city a day after it fell to rebels.