Britain says 400,000 Somali children at risk of death

Britain said on Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of children could starve to death in Somalia if the international community did not ramp up its response to the famine there.

Britain has already pledged more than 80 million pounds to help tackle what aid agencies are calling the worst drought in decades to hit Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.

The British government is expected to announce additional funding specifically to deal with the unravelling humanitarian crisis later on Wednesday, a diplomatic source said.

"We call today on other countries to put their shoulders to the wheel and ensure this dreadful famine ... does not claim up to 400,000 children," Andrew Mitchell, Britain's International Development Secretary, told a news conference in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Japan has also pledged about $600,000 worth of aid to the U.N. refugee agency to help famine victims at the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya, home to 440,000 Somali refugees.

Mitchell's visit to Somalia, which is grappling to quash an Islamist rebellion that has hampered the delivery of food aid across swathes of its southern and central regions, was the first by a senior British minister since 1992.

CLAIMS OF FOOD AID STEALING

Somalia has been mired in violence and awash with weapons since the overthrow of Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991. First warlords, then Islamist militants stepped into the power vacuum, reducing a string of Western-backed governments to impotence.

Earlier this month, however, the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels pulled most of their troops out of Mogadishu, epicentre of their bloody struggle.

Their retreat effectively left the government in control of the entire capital for the first time since the civil war began in the early nineties, although Somali troops and African peacekeepers still encounter pockets of rebel resistance.

"(We discussed) the importance of taking the opportunity of using the withdrawal of al Shabaab from Mogadishu to demonstrate what the TFG (Transitional Federal Government) can deliver," Mitchell said after meeting Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali.

It was imperative Somalia's government cracked down on graft, Mitchell said.

Somalia is among the world's most corrupt nations and in recent days has been hit by allegations that food aid intended for famine victims was being stolen and sold for a profit.

The U.N. World Food Programme said on Monday it was investigating claims of theft and sought to assure Somalis there would be no reduction in food aid flows.

"I want to tell the international community that we have a zero tolerance, zero tolerance, for any kind of government militia or any other Somali looting food aid," Ali said.

Thousands of refugees have been making the treacherous journey from the worst-hit drought areas, mostly under the control of rebels, to Mogadishu to seek access to food.

There they generally stay at one of several overcrowded makeshift camps in Mogadishu where cholera has broken out in parts of the capital as well as in other areas of the country.

The British charity Oxfam said it would begin airlifting 47 tonnes of water supply and hygiene materials to Mogadishu on Thursday to help more than 120,000 people get clean water.