SOMALIA

Somalia needs International assistance again... this time not to protect it in the throes of a devastating famine but the attack of a swarm of voracious locusts, known as quela. "The farming communities in Somalia are becoming increasingly desperate, almost going back 10 the same situation as during the famine," laments Talib Ali, a UN official working with the Food and kgriculture Organization itationed in Somalia. A giant swarm of the quelatiny quail-like marauding insects - has reportedly descended like a pall of doom over the Somalian farmlands. And unless international forces are mobilised now, Somalia will be ravaged once again.