Authorities in Somalia's self-declared autonomous region of Puntland in the northeast have appealed for international aid following the destruction of thousands of hectares of pasture and farmland by a locust infestation.<br><br> "We issued an appeal for help on September 23; Puntland alone cannot deal with this,' Hassan Arab, the deputy minister of rangeland and forestry, told the <font class="UCASE">un</font>'s Integrated Regional Information Networks. "This time the swarms are bigger and more destructive than the ones we had in June. They have also spread to a wider area,' he said.