The EU is doubling humanitarian aid to Africa’s Sahel area to €95 million in a “race against time” to lift two million people facing food shortages out of danger.

HUNDREDS of thousands of Somali children could die in the country’s famine unless more help arrives, a top US official said last night as Washington prepared to announce $100 million (€70.34m) in famine aid.

NUURTO Ibrahim Mannur comes from a remote village called Barbaare (75km west of Baidoa town) in south-central Somalia.

Tens of thousands of famine-stricken Somali refugees were cold and drenched after torrential rains pounded their makeshift structures overnight and today in the capital, leading to appeals for aid.

Somali pirates preying on international shipping are also damaging their homeland’s battered economy, worsening the instability that opened the door to piracy and inroads by Islamist extremists, the UN chief warned.