'Off the charts': 133k Somali children die in famine after militant ban, slow aid response

FILE - In this Saturday Aug. 6, 2011 file photo, the shrouded body of 12-month-old Liin Muhumed Surow, who died of malnutrition 25 days after reaching the camp according to her father Mumumed, lies before burial at UNHCR's Ifo Extension camp, near Dadaab in Kenya close to the Somali border. Officials in East Africa say a report to be released this week by two U.S. government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet from Somalia's 2011 famine, estimating that 260,000 people died - more than double previous estimates. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File) (The Associated Press)

FILE - In this Monday, July 25, 2011 file photo, an unidentified child reacts as he is weighed at a field hospital of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) in the town of Dadaab, Kenya. Officials in East Africa say a report to be released this week by two U.S. government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet from Somalia's 2011 famine, estimating that 260,000 people died - more than double previous estimates. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam, File) (The Associated Press)

FILE - In this Saturday, July 23, 2011 file photo, a woman sits with her child at a local hospital to receive treatment for malnutrition at the border town of Dadaab, Kenya. Officials in East Africa say a report to be released this week by two U.S. government-funded famine and food agencies gives the highest death toll yet from Somalia's 2011 famine, estimating that 260,000 people died - more than double previous estimates. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam, File) (The Associated Press)

A decision by extremists Islamist militants to ban food aid and international donors numb to a series of unfolding disasters made south-central Somalia the most dangerous place in the world to be a child in 2011.

The first in-depth scientific study of famine deaths in Somalia in 2011 was released Thursday. It estimates 133,000 children under age 5 died, with child death rates approaching 20 percent in some communities.

That's 133,000 under-5 deaths out of an estimated 9.3 million people. That compares to 65,000 under-5 deaths in all other industrial countries in the world, a combined population of 990 million, according to Chris Hillbruner, a senior food security adviser at FEWS NET, a famine warning agency.

The Associated Press earlier reported Monday on the overall findings of the report.