Envoy appeals urgent help for 11 million Africans facing food shortages

A senior U.N. envoy appealed for
urgent help for 11 million people hit by food shortages amid severe drought in parts of Africa.
"This is a very serious and a big crisis, and if the
world community does not wake up, then it would become a
real catastrophe," Kjell Magne Bondevik said Thursday
while visiting an ancient Maasai grazing land that was
littered with animal carcasses.
"People are already starving and people are dying."
Bondevik, the new U.N. humanitarian envoy for the Horn of
Africa and a former Norwegian prime minister, toured this
southern corner of Kenya to see for himself the impact of
the drought that has hit eastern, central and the Horn of
Africa, The Associated Press reported.