VP Biden’s wife heads to famine-stricken Horn of Africa

Jill Biden, Vice President Joe Biden's wife is leading a delegation of high-level American officials to the Horn of Africa this weekend to witness the severe famine affecting the area, according to CBS.

The delegation includes the administrator for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Assistant Secretary from the State Department. Former Sen. Bill Frist is also going, according to the nonprofit Hope Through Healing Hands.

"As the situation in Somalia and East Africa so clearly illustrates, we all need to be responding to the very human tragedy that is unfolding," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday.

The drought and famine in Somalia have killed more than 29,000 children under the age of 5 in the last 90 days in southern Somalia alone, according to U.S. estimates. Out of a population of about 7.5 million, the United Nations says 3.2 million Somalis are in need of immediate lifesaving assistance.

See GlobalPost: Somalia famine grows, 12.5 million at risk:

"The famine is as much about failed politics as failed rains," said the president of the African Development Bank.

“While this is a tragedy triggered by the worst drought in 60 years, it is largely about our collective failure to end the Somali civil war," said Donald Kaberuka during a visit to Washington Monday.

Meanwhile, Somali government troops opened fire Friday, killing at least seven people, as troops and hungery civilians both went for food at a U.N. distribution site in Mogadishu, witnesses said.

Witnesses accused the government soldiers of trying to steal some of the 290 tons of dry rations that  aid workers tried to hand out in the biggest refugee camp in Mogadishu, the Associated Press reported. Then refugees joined in the scramble, prompting some soldiers to open fire.

"It was carnage. They ruthlessly shot everyone," said Abdi Awale Nor, who has been living at the camp. "Even dead bodies were left on the ground and other wounded bled to death."