World Scene

SOMALIA

U.N. races to get food to starving refugees

DOLO — The United Nations will airlift emergency rations this week to parts of drought-ravaged Somalia that militants banned them from more than two years ago.

The foray into the famine zone is a desperate attempt to reach at least 175,000 of the 2.2 million Somalis whom aid workers have not yet been able to help.

Tens of thousands already have trekked to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia, hoping to get aid in refugee camps.

Restarting the aid effort is a huge challenge for the World Food Program, whose workers were previously banned from the region by the al-Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabab. Fourteen WFP employees have been killed in Somalia since 2008.

SAUDI ARABIA

Rights group claims authorities blocked website

CAIRO — Amnesty International said Saudi authorities on Monday blocked the group’s website inside the kingdom, following criticism of a controversial new anti-terrorism draft law.

The London-based group said the bill, which was reviewed by a Saudi government committee in June and has yet to be passed, allows authorities to prosecute peaceful dissent as a terrorist crime.

Amnesty on Friday posted on its website the full Arabic text of the anti-terrorism draft law, along with an internal review of the law by a Saudi security committee.

RUSSIA

Islamist terrorist warns of ’blood and tears’ campaign

GROZNY — Russia will be the target of new terrorist attacks by a newly strengthened Islamic insurgency, Moscow’s most wanted Muslim militant, Doku Umarov, warned in a video posted on an Islamist-affiliated website on Monday.

A decade after Russian forces drove a separatist government from Chechnya, Moscow is struggling to contain an insurgency that wants an Islamic state in Russia’s North Caucasus.

Umarov, 47, claimed responsibility for masterminding the January suicide bombing of Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, which killed 37. He has also promised a year of “blood and tears” for Russia ahead of parliamentary elections in December and a presidential election in 2012.

ISRAEL

Military intercepts boat with arms on Dead Sea

JERUSALEM — Security forces intercepted a boat Monday on the Dead Sea carrying assault rifles and ammunition from Jordan, Israeli authorities said.

The military provided a photograph showing a haul of 10 Kalashnikov rifles and the same number of ammunition clips. Police arrested two Palestinian men on board, spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. He said the intended destination of the weapons was unclear.

The military said it was treating the incident as an attempted weapons smuggling operation and not as an attempted militant attack. Army Radio described the vessel as a rubber dinghy.

SOUTH AFRICA

Man declared dead wakes up in morgue

JOHANNESBURG — A South African man awoke to find himself in a morgue fridge, nearly a day after his family thought he had died, a health official said Monday.

Health department spokesman Sizwe Kupelo said the man awoke Sunday afternoon, 21 hours after his family called in an undertaker who sent him to the morgue after an asthma attack.

Morgue owner Ayanda Maqolo said he sent his driver to collect the body shortly after the family reported the death. Mr. Maqolo said he thought the man, whose name was not released, was about 80 years old.

But a day after staff put the body into a locked refrigerated compartment, morgue workers heard someone shouting for help. They thought it was a ghost, the morgue owner said.

They called police and waited for the authorities to arrive before entering the morgue. The man was pale when they pulled him out.

“He asked, ’How did I get here?’ ” Mr. Maqolo said.

The health department said the man was then taken to a nearby hospital for observation and later discharged by doctors who deemed him stable.

From wire dispatches and staff reports