SHE CAN'T SHED A TEAR

CHILDREN BEAR THE BRUNT OF SUFFERING IN SOMALIA CRISIS

- SIMON MURPHY

>> Plight of Nasro, the baby who is too dehydrated to cry

>> Weary mothers cradle infants as they fight hunger

HELPLESS two-year-old Nasro lays a hand across her head and lets out a plaintive cry... yet she physically can't shed a tear.

The malnourished toddler is too gripped by dehydration.

She hasn't smiled in months.

Her gaunt frame tips the scales at barely more than a stone - just twice the weight of an average newborn.

For seven long days her devoted mother Samiro has kept a bedside vigil at the intensive care unit in Banadir Hospital's stabilisation centre in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital.

Nasro is fed via a nasal tube.

PRAYING

Samiro, 25, tells us: "Every time when I was with my daughter day and night I was praying for her to recover... I don't sleep. The last time I saw her smiling was June. Since then she was feeling dizzy, sick.

Nasro's plight encapsulates the pain of an entire nation. The impoverished country in East Africa has been ravaged by decades of war and the Islamist terror group Al-Shabaab controls vast swathes of territory.

But an old and equally deadly threat has returned: Drought.... leading to crippling hunger.

A catastrophe is unfolding before the world's eyes. Crops have failed, livestock perished.

As countries around the globe grapple with the impact of the climate crisis, Somalia has endured its worst drought on record.

Research has found climate change has increased the severity of drought in the Horn of Africa. It is estimated such droughts have become 100 times more likely.

After a summer of wildfires across Europe, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has controversially watered down key UK climate policies.

But wartorn Somalia for a fraction of global emissions appears to be I was pra bearing the brunt of my daug climate change.