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Dolo, Somalia — <\/span>A crying baby’s voice is a sign of hope in a crowded displacement camp in the south somalia<\/a> \u2014The most malnourished children are too weak to cry. <\/p>\n for mothers Laden camp in Dolo city<\/a>Surviving is the only thing on their mind – no iran war<\/a> Or how UNICEF gets supplies to keep that place running. The displaced people here have fled the drought Devastated parts of this Horn of Africa nation<\/a> After four unsuccessful rainy seasons. <\/p>\n Their crops and livestock destroyed, they are often seen in the camp apart from their children. <\/p>\n Aid workers in Ladan say the fierce war in the Middle East, more than 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles) away, has made their work harder, with supplies disrupted and fuel costs rising. <\/p>\n UNICEF says it has $15.7 million worth of life-saving supplies \u2013 including medical food, vaccines and mosquito nets \u2013 in transit or being prepared for delivery in Somalia. But those shipments are now uncertain.<\/p>\n The UN agency says transport costs could increase by 30% to 60%, and even double on some routes, while rerouting and delays due to backlogs are more likely.<\/p>\n During a visit to Dollo on Wednesday, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said the Iran war has been a “shock to the system” for the agency’s work on the ground in Somalia.<\/p>\n “That means we can’t get supplies so easily, and the cost of fuel is really high,” she said. \u201cThis is another problem we have to try to deal with, and it means more and more children will suffer from it.\u201d<\/p>\n Additionally, more than 400 health and nutrition facilities have closed in Somalia over the past year, largely due to US funding cut<\/a>Many communities have been denied access to support. Aid agencies have warned that there could be more closures.<\/p>\n All of those issues have complicated the situation in Laden, where the youngest people are especially at risk of hunger. <\/p>\n “What we’re seeing is that kids are really already on edge,” Russell said.<\/p>\n In Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, the government warned last month that about 6.5 million people out of a population of more than 20 million faced severe hunger as drought conditions worsened and the country’s crisis was compounded by conflict and cuts in global aid. <\/p>\n As the Somali government grapples with a long-running war against al-Qaeda affiliates, humanitarian needs are just the tip of the iceberg. al shabaab<\/a> militant group, fighting Reclaim territory from extremists.<\/a><\/p>\n Fresh data from a report by Integrated Food Safety Stage Classification<\/a>The Global Hunger Monitoring Group estimates that 1.84 million children under the age of 5 in Somalia are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition in 2026.<\/p>\n In Ladan, which sprawls across the city’s dusty outskirts, rows of makeshift shelters stretch under the scorching sun, fragile structures of plastic sheets and torn clothes held together by sticks and thorny branches. The camp is home to approximately 4,500 families.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just want our children to survive,\u201d said Shamso Noor Hussain, a 20-year-old widow with three children. She fled her village in the Bakul area after losing all her farm animals. <\/p>\n His cooking stove at camp \u2013 three stones and ashes \u2013 was cold, with no sign of a recent fire. <\/p>\n “Since the morning we have only drank black tea,” he told The Associated Press at the camp. <\/p>\n At Dollo’s hospital, mothers lay on narrow beds shoulder to shoulder with emaciated babies, some too weak to cry while others moaned softly.<\/p>\n Liban Roble, a nutrition program coordinator, said the hospital mainly saw “moderate cases.” <\/p>\n “We are now finding children in extremely dire conditions – severely malnourished, emaciated and in some cases almost skeletal,” he said.<\/p>\n Roble said the hospital only has supplies to treat the malnourished “until mid-April or late April.”<\/p>\n \u201cIf new stock does not arrive, more children will deteriorate and potentially die,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n At the nutrition center in Ladan, health workers weighed children and squeezed peanut-based paste into the children’s mouths. <\/p>\n It is a lifeline, a means of halting the rapid deterioration of malnourished children, said nurse Abdimajid Adan Hussein.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir weak bodies make them vulnerable to pneumonia, diarrhea and other diseases,\u201d Hussain said.<\/p>\n Community leaders say support is already waning.<\/p>\n “We used to receive aid from humanitarian agencies, but that stopped in September 2025,” said Abdifatah Mohammed Osman, Ladan’s vice president. \u201cThe little support we get now is mainly medical food for malnourished children.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n For more on Africa and development: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/africa-palse<\/a><\/p>\n The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. AP is solely responsible for all content. find api standards<\/a> A list of philanthropies to work with, supporters and funded coverage areas ap.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dolo, Somalia — A crying baby’s voice is a sign of hope in a crowded displacement camp in the south somalia \u2014The most malnourished children are too weak to cry. for mothers Laden camp in Dolo citySurviving is the only thing on their mind – no iran war Or how UNICEF gets supplies to keep<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[904,7564,1255,10994,4628],"class_list":["post-24104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bible-news","tag-children","tag-edge","tag-hunger","tag-somali","tag-spreads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24106,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24104\/revisions\/24106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}