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UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The west African nation of Niger is suffering "an acute humanitarian crisis" in which children are dying because the world community ignored U.N. appeals for urgent aid, the U.N. humanitarian chief said Tuesday.
Jan Egeland said 2.5 million people are in desperate need of food, including 800,000 malnourished children. Some 150,000 of those children will die soon "unless we really get to step up our operation."
The landlocked country, one of the poorest in the world, was devastated by an invasion of locusts that ate everything green last year and was then hit by drought that lasted until earlier this month, he said.
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