MOBILE PHONE WARNINGS SET TO AID CLIMATE-VULNERABLE SOMALI NOMADS

In central Somalia's Beledweyne district, families still reeling from food shortages and livestock deaths after another year of poor rains were surprised by a new disaster last month: brutal floods that completely submerged homes after the Shabelle River burst its banks.

Across the district, 230,000 people were driven from their homes, the UN refugee agency UNHCR reported, some fleeing through neck-deep water.

"The situation was devastating," Ahmed Omar Ibrahim, an aid worker with Save the Children, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.