Islamists hit famine relief

Famine has eased in some parts of southern Somalia, but an Islamist insurgency continues to disrupt aid to a quarter of a million people in danger of starvation, the United Nations says.

A huge scaling-up of relief has helped cut malnutrition and mortality rates. At one point, some 750,000 Somalis faced starvation. That number fell to 250,000 after a massive expansion of relief efforts, the United Nations said.