Nearly 80% of Yemeni children need immediate humanitarian assistance amid the collapse of the country's health system in the face of the two-year-long civil war, three UN agencies have said.

The UN said it is using newly opened land routes to expand food deliveries to areas around the Syrian city of Raqqa, where US-backed forces are battling Islamic State militants in their self-declared capital.

Boko Haram extremists are actively planning to kidnap western foreign workers in north-east Nigeria, according to the US and UK governments.

The older brother of a Syrian boy whose image, dazed and bloodied after an air strike, shocked people around the world, has died in Aleppo from wounds sustained in the same incident, a war monitor, a local council official and a witness said.

Government had prohibited help for opposition-held Daraya.

EU leaders concentrated on how to seal Europe’s borders as they were warned to expect many millions of refugees over the coming months and years.

Bitterly divided European leaders will seek to find a credible response to the worst migration crisis affecting the continent since World War Two, at an emergency summit next week.

Appeal for cThe UN’s food agency is cutting back on assistance to thousands of Syrian refugees after an appeal for a ceasefire to enable Syrians feed themselves went unheeded, World Food Programme (WFP) executive director Ertharin Cousin said.easefire so Syrians could feed selves went unheeded

Eight senior UN officials have issued a joint demand for world leaders to put their differences aside and find an end to the Syrian crisis, saying the credibility of the international community is at stake.

The World Health Organisation says the number of people believed to have Ebola has risen above 10,000.

Tense negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition focused on the transfer of power and helping besieged parts of the central city of Homs as they entered their fifth day.

AT LEAST 842m people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger — a nearly 1.5% decrease from the 854m estimated for 2010-12. Clearly, while some progress has been made, the world still has a long way to go to eradicate under-nutrition.

Ireland has sent another 16 tonnes of life-saving supplies to the Philippines.

Ireland has committed to providing a minimum of €7m a year for the next three years to the World Food Programme.

Charities are warning of crippling food price rises here and worldwide if immediate action is not taken to counteract the effects of climate change.

North Korea’s neighbours were monitoring missile movements in the rogue state as Pyonyang began celebrating a series of April holidays today.

It is a characteristic of despots whose time as a supreme leader, unquestioned and all-powerful, nears an inevitable and bloody end that they grow ever more careless of the welfare of the people they once imagined loyal, happy citizens of their autocracy.

Realities of food production are hitting home.

Millions of North Korean children are not getting the food, medicine or healthcare they need to develop physically or mentally, leaving many stunted and malnourished, the United Nations said today.

MORE than 3,000 people were killed in South Sudan in brutal massacres last week in an explosion of ethnic violence that forced tens of thousands to flee, a local official said yesterday as the UN increased patrols.

THOUSANDS of sacks of food aid meant for Somalia’s famine victims have been stolen and are being sold openly, depriving those who have flooded into the country’s capital of urgently needed supplies, an investigation has found.

THE United Nations Human Rights Council should accept responsibility, on behalf of the world forum, for the famine spreading through eastern Africa, and should call for member countries’ cooperation to overcome the desperate food crisis there, experts said.

THE number of people fleeing famine-hit areas of Somalia is likely to rise dramatically and could overwhelm international aid efforts in the Horn of Africa, a UN aid official has claimed.

At least 10 Somalis, among them refugees, were killed during a firefight that broke out in Mogadishu when troops and residents looted truckloads of food meant for famine victims, two witnesses said.

It is feared the area hit by famine in Somalia will soon expand.

Al Qaida-linked militants in Somalia vowed to keep most international aid workers away despite a worsening famine, as the United Nations warned that 800,000 children could die from starvation.

An al-Qaida-linked militant group has said it will not allow banned aid organisations to return to southern Somalia, meaning only a handful of agencies will be able to respond to the worsening famine.

The head of the United Nations refugee agency said drought-ridden Somalia was the “worst humanitarian disaster” in the world.

The horn of Africa is again in serious trouble, on the verge of massive famine, even worse than the famine that ravaged Ethiopia in the 1980s.

Muammar Gaddafi's forces have shelled the besieged rebel frontline city of Misrata, hitting residential areas and wounding four people, a doctor said today.

At least 41 people were killed when a female suicide bomber detonated her explosive vest in a crowded aid distribution centre in north west Pakistan today.

Police arrested two would-be suicide bombers planning to attack a mosque and a government building in Pakistan’s capital today.

AN Irish soldier has been deployed to Haiti as part of a major UN mission to help the stricken nation prepare for the impact of the hurricane.

The Government has allocated more than half of the €2m in aid Ireland has pledged to the relief effort in Pakistan.

THE World Food Programme has had to suspend food aid to children over the age of two in Niger despite the high malnutrition rate for this age group.

About 150,000 Pakistanis were forced to move to higher ground as floodwaters from a freshly swollen Indus River submerged dozens more towns and villages in the south, a government spokesman said today.

Drought-stricken Niger has been struck by devastating flooding, aid agencies said today.

Niger is facing the worst hunger crisis in its history, with almost half the country’s population in desperate need of food and up to one in six children suffering from acute malnutrition, aid officials said today.

A UN Security Council report found much of the food aid intended for Somalia’s poor is diverted to corrupt contractors, radical Islamist militants and local UN workers.

IRISHMAN and UN relief chief John Ging yesterday praised Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin for his “political courage” in visiting Gaza as €12 million in Irish aid was confirmed for Palestinian refugees.