Sun Aug 7, 2011 8:31PM
Somali children queue to collect food relief from the World Food Program at a settlement in the capital Mogadishu August 7, 2011.
At least twenty-five more Somali children have starved to death in the capital Mogadishu due to the country's worst humanitarian catastrophe in decades.
The children died over the past few hours and nearly 400 starving women and children have been rushed to a hospital in Mogadishu, a Press TV correspondent reported on Sunday.
The UN has added three more areas in southern Somalia to the famine zone, warning that without urgent intervention the food crisis could engulf all the southern parts of the country. The world body had already declared famine in two regions.
More than 29,000 children under the age of five have died of hunger over the past three months in southern Somalia, Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator of the US Agency for International Development said on Thursday.
According to reports, about 3.7 million people in Somalia are on the brink of starvation and millions more in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda have been affected by the worst drought in the region in 60 years.
Meanwhile, fighting between Somali government forces, backed by African Union troops, and al-Shabab fighters erupted in Mogadishu on Sunday, a day after the anti-government forces announced they were leaving the capital.
Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed had said the government was in control of most of Mogadishu after the fighters started the withdrawal. The al-Shabab says they would regroup and come back.
MA/MGH
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