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As hunger bites in Somalia, babies start to die

May 25, 2022 / 12:15 PM
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Sharjah24 - Reuters: Hacked-off thorn branches encircle two mounds of earth heaped over the tiny bodies of Halima Hassan Abdullahi's twin granddaughters. Babies Ebla and Abdia lived only a day.
Weakened by hunger, their mother gave birth to the twins a month early, eight weeks after their exhausted family walked into a camp for displaced families in the Somali town of Dollow.

"She is malnourished and her two babies died of hunger," Abdullahi said at the Kaxareey camp which sprang up in January and now houses 13,000 people.

They are among more than 6 million Somalis who need aid to survive.

After rains failed for four consecutive seasons, the worst drought in 40 years has shrivelled their beans and maize and dotted scrubland with the corpses of their goats and donkeys.

With global focus on Ukraine, aid agencies and the United Nations are desperate to attract attention to a calamity they say is shaping up to be comparable to Somalia's 2011 famine. More than a quarter of a million people died then, mostly children under five.
May 25, 2022 / 12:15 PM

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