France Begins Food Airlift to Dying Somalis

France started an emergency airlift of food to starving Somalia on Wednesday, but the United States postponed its first flight because a bush airstrip was too narrow to take C-141 transport planes.

U.S. troops were rushing to the airstrip in northern Kenya to cut down trees to widen the runway, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said.

French Embassy officials in the Red Sea state of Djibouti said a chartered Hercules C-130 aircraft carrying 20 tons of emergency food left for Baydhabo in southwest Somalia, one of the areas worst hit by drought compounded by civil war.

A French medical group said Baydhabo, 140 miles northwest of Mogadishu, was one of the towns in an area where corpses litter the ground and villagers are so hungry they are chewing their clothes and their goatskin bags.

“We have just taken a new step into horror,” said a statement by the French group, Medecins Sans Frontieres, quoting a team that has visited the area.

“Most villages are deserted, destroyed or burned down. Only larger villages are inhabited, and they are now home for thousands of displaced families, farmers who have lost everything,” the statement added.

French officials said the flight Wednesday was the first in a series of 10 to deliver 200 tons of rice, dried vegetables and cooking oil to the town.

About 1.5 million people are at immediate risk of starving to death in the Horn of Africa country. At least a quarter of all Somali children under the age of 5 are believed to have died in famine and civil strife, aid organizations say.

The world has awakened late to the Somali tragedy but offers of help are now pouring in. Germany said it will join the airlift, flying in food in a $14-million operation.