Famine: 'Hundreds of thousands of children could die"

DADAAB, Kenya (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of Somali children could die in East Africa's famine unless more help arrives, a top U.S. official warned today in the starkest death toll prediction yet. To highlight the crisis, the wife of Vice President Joe Biden visited a refugee camp filed with hungry Somalis.

Jill Biden is the highest-profile U.S. visitor to East Africa since the number of refugees coming across the Somali border dramatically increased in July. Biden, who traveled to the camp in a C-130 military transport plane, said she wants to raise awareness and persuade donors to give more.

"One of the reasons to be here is just to ask Americans and people worldwide, the global community, the human family, if they could just reach a little deeper into their pockets and give money to help these poor people, these poor mothers and children," said Biden, who met with two Somali mothers and their eight children.

As a long convoy of SUVs drove through the sand to bring her to the camp, small wildebeests scurried off to the side and women tended a herd of goats. Biden was then taken on a tour of the refugee camp by personnel.