Somali famine death warning

BRITAIN warned that hundreds of thousands of children could starve to death in Somalia if the international community did not ramp up its response to the famine there.

“We call today on other countries to put their shoulders to the wheel and ensure this dreadful famine... does not claim up to 400,000 children,” Andrew Mitchell, Britain’s International Development Secretary, told a news conference in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Mitchell’s visit to Somalia, which is grappling to quash an Islamist rebellion that has hampered the delivery of food aid across swathes of its southern and central regions, was the first by a senior British minister since 1992.