UN: 4 million at risk as famine spreads in lawless Somalia

An internally displaced Somali woman attends to her malnourished son at the Banadir hospital in Mogadishu on Aug. 16. Somalia called for the creation of a new force to protect food aid convoys and camps in the famine-hit country. (Ismail Taxta / Reuters)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44396923/ns/world_news-africa/#.TmVHxGqKJhk

updated 9/5/2011 11:44:54 AM ET

NAIROBI, Kenya — Famine has spread into one more region of Somalia and more than 4 million Somalis now need aid, the United Nations said Monday.
Hundreds of Somalis are dying every day, the U.N. Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia found in its latest surveys. At least half of them are children.

About 750,000 more people may die from famine in the next four months if there is no adequate response, the U.N. report said, an increase of 66 percent from July.

The top humanitarian official for Somalia described getting aid to the starving as a "race against time" and warned the famine would probably spread before the end of the year.

"This isn't a short-term crisis," said Mark Bowden, who heads the U.N. office coordinating humanitarian aid to Somalia.

Bowden said the 4 million Somalis needing aid represent more than half of Somalia's population. He said it is also an increase from 3.7 million Somalis who needed aid in July.

The southern Bay region is the latest area to be declared a famine zone. Nearly 60 percent of people there are acutely malnourished — four times the rate at which an emergency is declared, said Grainne Moloney, head of the food security unit.

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Bowden said access to areas in the south held by the al-Shabab insurgent militia was improving, and that there were some aid agencies that were able to work there.

"There's a far greater level of coverage than we anticipated," he said.

The U.N. food agency was concentrating on the areas of Somalia it did have access to — about 1.9 million people — and encouraging donors to fund other agencies who had access to southern areas, spokeswoman Challiss McDonough said.

Men make donations to help the people of Somalia in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Aug. 22. A famine has swept across the Horn of Africa, leaving at least 3.7 million Somalis at risk of starvation. (Fahad Shadeed / Reuters)

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