PHOTO: A newly arrived refugee girl walks into the Baley settlement near the Ifo extension refugee camp in Dadaab, near the Kenya-Somalia border, Wednesday. The first in a series of UN famine relief flights is scheduled to land in Somalia’s capital Wednesday. (REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya)
The first UN plane in two years is scheduled to go into the Somali capital’s airport Wednesday carrying food aid. Some 3.7 million people, including more than 2.3 million children under age 5, in Somalia alone need help.
The chartered aircraft will be the first United Nations plane into Mogadishu’s international airport since Islamists banned the organization from working there two years ago. It is loaded with Plumpy’nut, a patented high-nutrition, peanut-based paste designed to help children so malnourished that it is often too late for ordinary food to make any difference.Negotiations continue between Western humanitarian organizations and Al Shabab, the pro-Al Quada Islamists who are refusing access to several UN agencies and international charities.
READ: International groups accelerate effort to relieve East Africa’s famine
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