AID FOR NIGER.

Aid reaches Niger relief centres.

Actual distribution of the aid is not due to start until next week. Aid has begun reaching feeding centres for the 2.5m people estimated to be facing famine in Niger and distribution is due to begin in earnest next week. Most supplies are being brought in overland but more than 40 metric tons of emergency UN food aid has arrived by air from Italy and more is due.

France, the former colonial power, is to triple food aid and UK charities have appealed for fresh donations. Crops in Niger were badly hit this year by drought and a plague of locusts.

According to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), 2.5m people are "on the brink of starvation". Doctors have warned that disease is now also a serious threat, particularly to undernourished children. "These children are very, very vulnerable," Johanne Sekkenes, mission head for Medecins Sans Frontieres in Niger, told Reuters news agency. "If they're already malnourished and they get malaria they need expert medical and nutritional help straight away."