UN chief visits war-ravaged Somalia

UN chief Ban Ki-moon met the president of Somalia, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, under heavy security Oct. 29 in Mogadishu, his first visit to the dangerous capital of the war-torn nation in almost three years.
      
Ban, along with World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim, met Mohamud inside the fortified airport zone, guarded by troops from the 22,000-strong UN-backed African Union force, Somalia's presidency said in a statement.
      
They were not expected to travel outside the airport's concrete blast walls, manned by AU machine gunners, into the city itself.
      
Ban however was dressed in a suit and not the bullet-proof jacket he wore on his last visit to Mogadishu in 2011. At that time, the country was suffering a famine in which over 250,000 people died, half of them children.
      
Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab insurgents have in recent months lost swathes of territory and towns to the AU force and Somali government troops, but they remain a potent threat.
      
This year they have launched attacks in the heart of Mogadishu, including brazen commando raids on the presidential palace and parliament.
      
Ban's brief touchdown in Mogadishu follows a visit by UN Security Council ambassadors in August to the city, and comes amid repeated warnings of a humanitarian crisis and a shortfall in funding.
                      
The UN says over a million Somalis are in conditions close to famine, while over a million have fled their homes due to fighting or hunger inside the country, and another million are living as refugees in the region.
      
Some 218,000 children under five are acutely malnourished, a rise of seven percent since the beginning of the year, the UN's Office for the Coordination of...