US pledges $100m funding for Somalia famine relief

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.

To highlight the crisis, the wife of Vice-President Joe Biden visited a refugee camp on a patch of desert in eastern Kenya where tens of thousands of Somalis have massed. A drought has turned into famine because little aid can reach militant-controlled south-central Somalia.

Jill Biden is the highest-profile US visitor to East Africa since the number of refugees coming across the Somali border dramatically increased in July. Biden arrived in a C-130 military transport plane and said she wants to raise awareness and persuade donors to give more.