US set to announce $100M in Somalia famine funding
By JASON STRAZIUSO
Associated Press
DADAAB, Kenya (AP) -- Hundreds of thousands of Somali children could die in the country's famine unless more help arrives, a top U.S. official said Monday as Washington prepared to announce $100 million in new 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 U.S. 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.
"What I'm asking is for Americans to reach out and help because the situation is dire," said Biden, who met with two Somali mothers and their eight children. "There is hope if people start to pay attention to this."
More than 29,000 children under the age of 5 have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia alone, according to U.S. estimates. The U.N. says 640,000 Somali children are acutely malnourished, suggesting the death toll of small children will rise.
USAID administrator Raj Shah, who accompanied Biden, said hundreds of thousands of children could die from the famine.
U.S. officials said Washington is set to announce an aid package of about $100 million for famine relief efforts. The officials could not be quoted by name ahead of a formal announcement.
More than 12 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of immediate food aid, including nearly half of Somalia's population. The U.N. has declared five famine zones in Somalia, including the camps for displaced people in Mogadishu, the capital.
|
Logged
