MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) - Operation restore hope marked its four-month anniversary

Friday with the planned handover to U.N. control still more than a month away, officials

said.

Severe famine caused by civil war has virtually vanished in a country where an estimated

350,000 people died last year from starvation and disease.

The troops who arrived Dec. 9 to safeguard food shipments from bandits have confiscated

thousands of weapons. Markets are thriving, but the streets remain hazardous with

no courts and only a fledgling police force.