Meanwhile...

Independent :

Across Iraq, millions of people are looking for safer places to live, and not finding them. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reported last week that 4.2 million Iraqis have been forced out of their homes.

There are also ominous signs that the four-month-old US security plan for Baghdad is failing to reduce the level of violence despite an extra 17,000 US troops in the capital.

"The situation in Iraq continues to worsen," the UNHCR announced, "with more than two million Iraqis now believed to be displaced inside the country and another 2.2 million sheltering in neighbouring states."

AP:

A suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber rammed a speeding gasoline truck into an Iraqi army checkpoint outside the capital on Saturday, killing at least 14 soldiers as militants hammered the country's shaky security forces.

The terror campaign against Iraqi troops and police appears designed to blunt U.S. progress in creating a stable local force so the Americans can go home. U.S. military officers began noticing the new pattern of attacks last month.

Humanitarian Crisis Looms in Somalia

BBC:

The UN has warned of a humanitarian disaster in Somalia, as fighting continues between insurgents and government-backed Ethiopian forces.

More than 200,000 people have fled their homes amid ongoing clashes in the capital, Mogadishu, the UN said.

Aid workers say the city is inhabited only by fighters and men protecting the remains of their property.

The fighting is making it increasingly difficult for the U.N. to get aid to the people who need it. Somalia has been effectively without government, and at the mercy of warlords, for sixteen years.