Realty Review

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Somalia's worst drought in a decade is leading to an increasing number of children in conditions akin to famine and deepen the humanitarian crisis caused by political violence, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.

Around 3.2 million Somalis are among the 19 million people are estimated to need emergency food assistance in the Horn of Africa to save their lives, aid officials said senior United Nations (UN).

Drought and high prices of local food also have left 12 million people in Ethiopia and 3.5 million in Kenya with scarce food, said.

We are facing a drought in Somalia is the worst that people has seen in at least a decade, said Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian coordinator for the country facing its fourth consecutive year of drought, at a briefing in Geneva.

Around 45 percent of the population (Somali) are suffering from moderate malnutrition, he said.

In parts of central and southern Somalia, 24 percent of children under five years suffer from severe malnutrition, he said.

Bowden, who later spoke with Reuters, noted that the rate amounted to some children living in conditions akin to starvation.

He said that while Somalis are now dying of hunger, as was seen at the beginning of the 1990s, their cattle are dying for lack of water. We need more people to suffer a total loss of their livelihood, he said.

About 1.1 million people in Somalia have been forced to flee their homes, including thousands who have fled the intensified fighting since the weekend in the capital Mogadishu between Islamist militia and government, according to Bowden.

The goal of an application for assistance to the Somalia UN this year has risen to $ 984 million, but donors have only been funded until the third date.

(Published in Spanish by Ricardo Figueroa)