In brief: Aid urged for famine-wracked Somalia

DOLO, Somalia – Somalia’s famine will be five times worse by Christmas unless the international community increases its food aid, Australia’s foreign minister said Sunday during a visit to Somalia, even as the international Red Cross distributed 400 tons of food into hard-to-reach areas of southern Somalia.

Kevin Rudd was in Somalia’s famine-struck area of Dolo to appeal to the world to help avoid a catastrophe. During his visit hundreds of women with small children massed around a World Food Program sign-up table in hopes of qualifying for food aid. Rudd talked with internal refugees who have had little to eat in recent days.

World Food Program Executive Director Josette Sheeran said Sunday the program will open new feeding sites in and around Dolo by the end of the week. She said it is critical that WFP gets new funding to fight the three-pronged catastrophe of drought, conflict and high food prices.

WFP estimates more than 11.3 million people need aid across drought-hit regions in East Africa.

Karzai condemns hanging of boy, 8

KABUL, Afghanistan – Insurgents in southern Afghanistan hanged an 8-year-old boy six days after they abducted him, the Afghan government said Sunday.

The boy’s captors had demanded that his father, a police officer, supply them with a police vehicle and he refused, said a statement from President Hamid Karzai’s office. The militants hanged the boy Friday in Helmand province’s Gereshk district.

“President Karzai both strongly condemns this act and rejects it as a brutal and cowardly crime that is not acceptable in any religion or culture,” the statement said. It referred to the killers as “terrorists,” but did not say if they belonged to the Taliban or another of the insurgent movements fighting foreign forces and their Afghan allies.

Suicide attack kills 8 near army camp

SANAA, Yemen – A suicide attacker driving a pickup packed with explosives blew himself up outside an army camp in Yemen’s coastal city of Aden on Sunday, killing at least eight soldiers and wounding dozens, security officials said.

The officials said the blast took place near the gate of the camp as a column of vehicles loaded with troops and supplies was preparing to leave for nearby Abyan province to take part in fighting against al-Qaida-linked militants.

Boy found alive in train wreckage

BEIJING – A toddler was found alive Sunday in the wreckage of two bullet trains that collided in eastern China the day before, an accident that intensified concerns about the country’s high-speed rail system.

The official New China News Agency said a boy was found unconscious by firefighters inside the wreckage Sunday afternoon and taken to a hospital. Three senior railway officials were fired in response to the collision, which killed at least 43 people and injured more than 200 in Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang province.