Somalia

The Seychelles government hits back at allegations the US is using the islands to launch drone attacks in Somalia and Yemen, insisting the aircraft are monitoring pirates not terrorists.

America’s covert war on terror is expanding across the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, with the building of secret drone airbases from Ethiopia to the Seychelles.

A Somali Islamist group denies kidnapping a British woman at a remote holiday resort in Kenya.

Channel 4 News Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Rugman blogs on the killing of David Tebbutt and the kidnapping of his wife Judith in Kenya

The UN reveals famine has spread to three quarters of Somalia, threatening 750,000 people with imminent starvation. Islamic Relief in the UK tells Channel 4 News the situation is now “catastrophic”.

The Disasters Emergency Committee tells Channel 4 News that just over a quarter of money it has raised towards the Horn of Africa Appeal is going to Somalia, the epicentre of the drought crisis.

In the first interview with a western news organisation since the UN declared famine in Somalia, a spokesman for the al-Shabaab Islamist group tells Channel 4 News there is no famine, only drought.

Jonathan Rugman blogs from Somalia on the heart-turning decisions some families are having to make as famine threatens the lives of millions of people in east Africa.

More than one million children have been displaced by the disaster in east Africa, and one charity tells Channel 4 News the situation in Somalia is “definitely getting worse”.

The British Somali journalist Jamal Osman experiences for himself just a little of the arduous trek being endured by thousands of starving Somalis making their way to the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.

As ministers meet in Rome to discuss how to get aid to the drought-hit Horn of Africa region, an aid worker in Somalia tells Channel 4 News they should “stop talking and act now” or children will die.

The UN’s food agency is set to hold emergency talks in Rome to urge donor countries for an extra $1.6bn in aid, amid the worst drought in east Africa for 60 years.

Our Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Rugman travels into Mogadishu, to witness thousands of refugees who have risked everything crossing conflict zones to escape famine in the countryside.