Ladawi is a 16-month-old girl with twigs for limbs, blotched skin, labored breathing, eyes that roll back and skin stretched tautly over shoulder blades that look as if they belong to a survivor of Auschwitz. She is so malnourished that she cannot brush away the flies that land on her eyes, and she does not react when a medical trainee injects drugs into her hip in a race to save her life.

"She's concerned only with trying to breathe," says the trainee, the closest thing to a doctor at a remote medical center here in southern Ethiopia. "Most likely she will not survive."

Ladawi would be the third child to die of malnutrition in three days just at this one little health center, and millions of other Africans are threatened by the specter of a famine rising over Ethiopia and neighboring countries. To bounce over the rutted roads here is to feel transported back to the Biafra crisis in Nigeria or the 1984-85 Ethiopia famine, for sick and dying children are everywhere.

We've all been distracted by Iraq, but an incipient famine in the Horn of Africa has been drastically worsening just in the last few weeks. It has garnered almost no attention in the West, partly because it's not generally realized that people are already dying here in significant numbers. But they are. And unless the West mobilizes further assistance immediately to Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, the toll could be catastrophic.

On Sunday morning I checked out of my hotel room at the Addis Ababa Sheraton, so luxurious an establishment that stereo speakers play music underwater in the glistening pool, and by evening I was in Awassa in southern Ethiopia, surrounded by children with glazed eyes, toothpick limbs and hideously swollen bellies.

"We've been overwhelmed by this, especially in the last three weeks," said Tigist Esatu, a nurse at the Yirba Health Center, crowded with mothers carrying starving children. "Some families come and say, `We've lost two children already, three children already, so you must save this one.' "

Since weapons of mass destruction haven't turned up so far in Iraq, there's been a revisionist suggestion that the American invasion was worthwhile because of humanitarian gains for the liberated Iraqi people. Fair enough. But as long as we're willing to send hundreds of thousands of troops to help Iraqis, what about offering much more modest assistance to save the children dying here?

"How is it that we routinely accept a level of suffering and hopelessness in Africa that we would never accept in any other part of the world?" asks James Morris, the executive director of the World Food Program. Ethiopians worry that with attention diverted by Iraq, Africa will be forgotten. It's a legitimate fear: in the 1990's, aid was diverted to the former Yugoslavia and away from much needier parts of Africa.

So far, the U.S. and Europe have responded reasonably well — it was heartwarming to see bags of wheat marked "U.S.A." even in isolated hamlets — but the needs are growing much faster than the supplies, and children are dying in the meantime.

"Now I worry about my other children," said Tadilech Yuburo, a young woman who lost one child last month and has three left. In her village, Duressa, population 300, five children have died in the last month of malnutrition-related ailments. In nearby Falamu, population 400, six children have died. Down the road in Kurda, population 1,000, six children have died.

This famine has not yet registered on the world's conscience, and the World Food Program says no journalist had previously visited this region since the crisis began. But although this area of Ethiopia has been hit particularly hard, 12 million people around the country are affected — compared with 10 million during the 1984-85 famine.

In past African crises, like Ethiopia's in 1984-85 and Rwanda's in 1994, the international community reacted too slowly, and hundreds of thousands of Africans died as a result. This time, we can still avert a similar catastrophe, but we must act at once. "We are appalled by the lack of full rations to food aid beneficiaries in Ethiopia, which amounts to slow starvation for those without other sources of food," an alliance of aid groups warned recently, adding: "For the international community to allow this to happen in the 21st century is unforgivable."

The death toll from three car bomb attacks late Monday night that blasted apart buildings in separate residential compounds occupied by Americans and other foreigners rose to at least 20 today, with scores of others wounded, Saudi and American officials said.

The suicide attacks spread terror and confusion through the night and drew condemnation from President Bush, Saudi leaders and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who arrived in Riyadh for scheduled talks with Crown Prince Abdullah only hours after the blasts.

Mr. Powell toured an apartment complex where the entire front was blown off. There was furniture and clothing strewn about the area around a 10-foot-deep crater and nearby there was an overturned truck that had been blasted apart.

Mr. Powell seemed shaken as he toured the site, just as a dust storm whipped through the rubble and a pungent stench from the explosives hung in the torrid air.

``This was a well-planned terrorist attack, obviously,'' he said somberly. ``The facility had been cased, as had the others. Very well executed. And it shows the nature of the enemy we are working against. These are people who are determined to try to penetrate facilities like this for purpose of killing people in their sleep, killing innocent people, killing people who are trying to help others.''

Like other officials, Mr. Powell said there was no evidence that Al Qaeda had carried out the attack, but he said it had that group's ``fingerprints.''

[President Bush reacted angrily to the attack.

``Today's attacks in Saudi Arabia, the ruthless murder of American citizens and other citizens, remind us that the war on terror continues,'' he said at an appearance in Indianapolis.

The president called the bombings ``despicable acts committed by killers whose only faith is hate.'' The crowd of 7,000 at the Indiana State Fairgrounds roared its approval when he said, ``The United States will find the killers, and they will learn the meaning of American justice.'']

Early reports by a Saudi official put the toll at 20. He said that seven Americans, seven Saudis, two Jordanians, two Filipinos, one Lebanese and one Swiss died. In addition, nine charred bodies believed to be those of the suicide attackers were found, the official said. American officials said they did not dispute those figures.

American officials said the three attacks were almost identical in method. In each case, a vehicle sped to a lightly guarded entry gate of one of three large residential compounds in the northeastern part of the sprawling capital. Gunmen shot their way past the sentries and then got inside the guardhouse to open the gate and to lower other barriers.

Then a second vehicle laden with explosives made its way into the compound, following similar routes that got them to the center where most people were retiring for the evening, before the drivers set off an explosion. A military officer at the Vinnell Arabia compound, which Mr. Powell visited, said there was a possibility that some of the perpetrators had fled at either the compound entrance or from the second vehicle before it exploded.

He said that all of the attacks took place within a few minutes of each other at approximately 11:20 p.m. and that it appeared the truck at the Vinnell complex contained 400 pounds of explosive material similar, he said.

That attackers appeared clearly to have singled out residential compounds occupied by foreigners. The Vinnell Arabia compound was home to about 500 military advisors, many retired from American armed forces, employed to help train the Saudi Arabian National Guard, which is a domestic security force.

The other two compounds were identified as Al Hambra and Gedawal, both occupied by some of the foreign community in Saudi Arabia working for businesses and trade organizations. Those compunds were home to not only to Americans and to British, but also Philippine, Turkish and other foreign citizens, as well as Saudis.

The estimates of the number of expatriots living in Riyadh ranges from 15,000 to 35,000. Some residents at the Al Hambra compound said this evening that many of their colleagues had left the country before the recent war with Iraq and had only started to return in recent weeks.

``Before the war, they asked us all to leave,'' said Jelal Berkel, 39, an employee of Saudi Snack Foods, a subsidiary of Frito Lay. ``But we said we feel secure in the compound. What a mistake.''

He said he and his wife, Elif, heard a loud clicking sound late at night, and initially thought it was firecrackers. It turned out to be automatic gunfire.

When they went to the window, he said they said they saw a huge orange light covering the sky, followed by an explosion and then intense heat. The blast blew open their windows and doors. In a videotape they made of the damage, the entire fronts of several apartments and villas had been sheered off and the contents blown about the area.

``It looks like a cruise missile or a Tomahawk or Scud missile fell into the place,'' Mr. Berkel said.

The Berkels said they were leaving Saudi Arabia immediately and they predicted other foreigners would as well, and they seemed puzzled by their own complacency until recently. Mrs. Berkel said that after the war with Iraq was over, the security gate to their compound was kept open after being closed during the war.

``You believe what you want to believe,'' she said. ``We thought it was very secure. We were just so happy and relaxed that everything was back to normal.''

Suicide bombers injured more than
40 Americans and other nationals and probably killed others in
devastating attacks on Westerners' compounds in Riyadh on Monday
night, a Saudi minister and the U.S. ambassador said.
The blasts came hours before U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell was due in the Saudi Arabian capital on Tuesday.
The bombs seemed to be the latest anti-Western attacks in
the kingdom that is the birthplace of Islam -- and also of Osama
bin Laden, head of the al Qaeda network blamed for the September
11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
"The three explosions that occurred in eastern Riyadh were
suicide bombings," Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef told Al
Riyadh daily, the newspaper's website reported.
"They were set off by cars stuffed with explosives that were
driven into the targeted compounds," he said.
U.S. ambassador Robert W. Jordan told CNN television from
Riyadh that more than 40 Americans had been wounded at the
heavily guarded compounds.
"We have somewhat over 40 Americans hospitalised at this
stage," he said. He thought it was likely there would be more
casualties and that there were a "fair number of other
nationals" injured and perhaps killed.
In Washington, the State Department said Powell would travel
to Riyadh as scheduled despite the bombings. He was due in
Riyadh at 11:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) to see Crown Prince Abdullah bin
Abdul-Aziz on the latest leg of a Middle East tour.
Powell spent the night in Jordan as part of a drive to
promote a peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians.
A Saudi hospital official earlier told Reuters the blasts
had killed an unspecified number of foreigners and Saudis. He
said none of the dead were at his hospital but that he had
received reliable information from colleagues elsewhere.

U.S. OFFICIAL SAYS FOUR BLASTS
A U.S. official who declined to be named said there had been
at least four bombs. Witnesses had earlier said they had heard
three blasts, which sent fire balls into the night sky.
above the Gharnata, Ishbiliya and Cordoba compounds.
The official also included a housing compound for a joint
Western-Saudi company in his count.
Ambulances rushed to and from the sites as hundreds of riot
police poured in to cordon the areas off. Helicopters scanned
the area with searchlights, weaving among plumes of smoke.
A European resident of one of the targeted compounds,
identified as Nick, said the explosion occurred shortly before
midnight and was so powerful it blasted windows and doors out of
houses.
"We were sleeping when we were woken up by the sound of
gunfire," he told the Arab News newspaper. "Moments later, a
loud explosion was heard followed by another bigger explosion. I
have a five-month-old baby. She was sleeping next to the window
when the blast took place."
One Australian woman, named as Helen, told CNN television
trucks had rammed into gates at her walled and heavily guarded
villa compound and exploded after an exchange of gunfire.
The U.S. official said there were suspicions the bombings
could be an al Qaeda operation, but it was "too early to tell".
On May 1, the United States renewed a warning for citizens
to avoid travel to Saudi Arabia. One official said intelligence
agencies had credible information about a possible al Qaeda plot
to strike American targets there. The same day, a gunman wounded
a U.S. civilian at a naval base in Saudi Arabia.

POLICE HUNT MILITANTS
On May 7 police said they were hunting 19 suspected
militants, mainly Saudis, believed to be hiding in Riyadh after
a shoot-out with security forces the previous day. The Interior
Ministry said police had also found a huge cache of explosives,
hand grenades, ammunition and machineguns.
Helen told CNN her sturdy villa had shaken like a cardboard
box. "What am I doing living in a country where we need this
kind of security? We're surrounded by people who obviously don't
want us here...it's the ugliest day in my life."
U.S.-Saudi ties came under strain after the September 11
attacks, apparently carried out mainly by Saudis loyal to bin
Laden's al Qaeda group, one of whose key demands is for U.S.
forces to leave the home of Islam's holiest sites.
Many ordinary Saudis, angry with perceived U.S. bias towards
Israel, are also irked by the presence of Western troops.
Suspected militant Islamists have twice launched major
attacks on U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia since the 1991 Gulf War to
eject Iraqi occupation forces from Kuwait.
In 1995, five Americans and two Indians were killed and 60
people were injured in an explosion in a car park near a
U.S.-run military training centre in Riyadh.
In 1996, a bomb in a fuel truck killed 19 U.S. soldiers and
wounded nearly 400 people at a U.S. military housing complex in
the eastern city of Khobar.
Last February, a British defence contractor was killed by a
Saudi suspected of al Qaeda links.
Two weeks ago the United States said it was removing
virtually all forces from the kingdom as they were no longer
needed after the war in Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein.
Saudi Arabia has charged 90 Saudis with belonging to al
Qaeda and is interrogating another 250.