Aid Workers Ask for Help to Avert Somali Starvation
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NAIROBI, Kenya — Hundreds of thousands of people stranded by devastating floods in southern Somalia will go hungry--and some may die--unless nations chip in several million dollars immediately for emergency relief, aid workers said Tuesday.
They estimated that 2,000 people have drowned since the flooding began in the East African nation last month. Tens of thousands more are marooned on small patches of high land that are inaccessible by road or airplane.
“Many of those people are not ones that anyone’s been able to reach yet,” said Catherine Bertini, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, citing this relief effort as her agency’s top priority.
The Juba and Shabelle rivers, swollen with rain in Ethiopia as well as Somalia, have overrun their banks and merged at several points--across dozens of miles.
The U.S. Agency for International Development said Tuesday that it will provide $2.8 million to help victims of floods in Somalia.
The first plane, carrying supplies for 20,000 people, arrived in Nairobi on Tuesday, the agency said.
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