Somali Town Buries 127 Victims

Gravediggers in the southern town of Bardera were employed by the United Nations on Friday to bury 127 famine victims who died there over the last 24 hours.

“We had to get the bodies off the streets. Nobody was burying them. They were rotting,” one U.N. official said.

A German military cargo plane helping out with the U.N. relief effort flew nine tons of flour and cooking oil to Bardera in the first food airlift since clan battles forced foreign aid workers to flee the town 10 days ago.

But aid workers who have now returned said it was too late to save many of the weak, particularly children who were being nursed back to health before relief operations collapsed.

Two weeks ago the death rate had been reduced to 20 a day. It has now shot up past the daily figure of 70 that relief staff reported when they first set up feeding centers in Bardera, 190 miles west of the capital, in August.