Drought, disease and conflict: Somalia is fighting a battle on all fronts
Nagib’s small feet poke out from a bundled blue shroud. His body is far too small for his three years of age.
He is shrunken by malnutrition and marked by the measles that eventually took his short life.
Nagib is carried out of the emergency care ward in Baidoa and into a white van as his mother sobs quietly in the backseat.
One more preventable death in the Bay area of southwest Somalia where prolonged drought, violence and skyrocketing food prices are pushing the population into famine.
A mother and her malnourished baby
Not far from Baidoa, al Qaeda-linked terror group al Shabaab is fighting to maintain its territory. They stalk vulnerable rural communities and collect taxes from farmers in the form of livestock.
In a nearby town, al Shabaab fighters recently ambushed a group of men building a well and burned them alive.
Those who manage to escape still suffer long-term consequences. Nagib’s family were unable to vaccinate him while living under al Shabaab. When malnutrition hit, his young body could not fight off a deadly case of measles.
Around 260,000 people lost their lives when famine was declared in Somalia in 2011. More than half of them were children. Today, nearly seven million people are facing extreme hunger and doctors are preparing for another humanitarian catastrophe.
Thousands of people have fled their homes and farms
“If it continues like this it will be worse than the last one. It will be the serious one,” said Dr Mohamed Osman Weheliye, an emergency care doctor at the Sahal Macalin Stabilisation Centre supported by Save the Children in Baidoa.
“People are going to die because of the long drought.”
Four failed rainy seasons have destroyed food security across the country and forecasts predict that this cycle of rain is unlikely to bring the moisture needed to replenish farms and grazing land.
Children contract other diseases easily when malnourished
This is the worst drought the region has seen in 40 years.
Nearly a million people have already been displaced and more than half of them have come to Baidoa, where camps keep growing.
Make-shift dome huts are cropping up all over the city as 4,000 new families arrive every week – fleeing their villages in search of food, water and safety.
The refugee camps as seen from above
“Drought brought me here. I lost my livestock. My farm is gone,” said Sudano Ali.
Sudano’s 10-month-old son Usama is assessed, weighed and measured at the stabilisation centre.
He is found to be acutely malnourished and medical staff are concerned by signs of something more – a persistent cough. Dr Weheliye suspects that baby Usama has pneumonia.
“It is the diseases that come with hunger,” says Dr Weheliye.
Hunger is just the start of suffering for these children.
Their weakened immune systems are unable to fight off the illness that are rife in the camps they now call home.
Drought, disease and conflict – a battle on all fronts.
Donald Trump has threatened Russia with more sanctions after a series of deadly strikes across Ukraine, as he said of Vladimir Putin: “What the hell happened to him?”
The US president appeared aghast at the conduct of his counterpart in the Kremlin after drone and missile attacks in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities left 12 people dead and dozens more injured.
Trump criticises Putin – latest updates
Speaking to reporters at an airport in New Jersey ahead of a flight back to Washington, Mr Trump said: “I’m not happy with Putin. I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“He’s killing a lot of people,” he added. “I’m not happy about that.”
Mr Trump – who said he’s “always gotten along with” Mr Putin – told reporters he would consider more sanctions against Moscow.
“He’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all,” he said.
Ukraine said the barrage of strikes overnight into Sunday was the biggest aerial attack of the war so far, with 367 drones and missiles fired by Russian forces.
It came despite Mr Trump repeatedly talking up the chances of a peace agreement. He even spoke to Mr Putin on the phone for two hours last week.
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Hundreds of drones fired at Ukraine
‘Shameful’ attacks
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukraine is ready to sign a ceasefire deal, and suggested Russia isn’t serious about signing one.
In a statement after the latest attacks on his country, he urged the US and other national leaders to increase the pressure on Mr Putin, saying silence “only encourages” him.
Mr Trump’s envoy for the country, Keith Kellogg, later demanded a ceasefire, describing the Russian attacks as “shameful”.
Three children were among those killed in the attacks, explosions shaking the cities of Kyiv, Odesa, and Mykolaiv.
Ukrainian siblings Tamara, 12, Stanislav, eight, and Roman, 17, were killed in Russian airstrikes. Pic: X/@Mariana_Betsa
Before the onslaught, Russia said it had faced a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday. It said around 100 were intercepted and destroyed near Moscow and in central and southern regions.
The violence has escalated despite Russia and Ukraine completing the exchange of 1,000 prisoners each over the past three days.
Donald Trump says he will delay the imposition of 50% tariffs on goods entering the United States from the European Union until July, as the two sides attempt to negotiate a trade deal.
It comes after the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a post on social media site X that she had spoken to Mr Trump and expressed that they needed until 9 July to “reach a good deal”.
The US president had last Friday threatened to bring in the 50% tariffs from 1 June, as European leaders said they were ready to respond with their own measures.
But Mr Trump has now said that date has been put back to 9 July to allow more time for negotiations with the 27-member bloc, with the phone call appearing to smooth over tensions for now at least.
Speaking on Sunday before boarding Air Force One for Washington DC, Mr Trump told reporters that he had spoken to Ms Von der Leyen and she “wants to get down to serious negotiations” and she vowed to “rapidly get together and see if we can work something out”.
The US president, in comments on his Truth Social platform, had reignited fears last Friday of a trade war between the two powers when he said talks were “going nowhere” and the bloc was “very difficult to deal with”.
Mr Trump told the media in Morristown, New Jersey, on Sunday that Ms Von der Leyen “just called me… and she asked for an extension in the June 1st date. And she said she wants to get down to serious negotiation”.
“We had a very nice call and I agreed to move it. I believe July 9th would be the date. That was the date she requested. She said we will rapidly get together and see if we can work something out,” the US president added.
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Shortly after, he wrote on Truth Social: “I agreed to the extension – July 9, 2025 – It was my privilege to do so.”
On his so-called “liberation day” last month, Mr Trump unleashed tariffs on many of America’s trade partners. But since then he’s backed down in a spiralling tit-for-tat tariff face-off with China, and struck a deal with the UK.
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Much of his most incendiary rhetoric on trade has been directed at Brussels, though, even going as far as to claim the EU was created to rip the US off.
Responding to his 50% tariff threat, EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic said: “EU-US trade is unmatched and must be guided by mutual respect, not threats.
“We stand ready to defend our interests.”
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