Three wire-service stories (updated Saturday to add the ones from the AP and AFP):
From Reuters...
Millions of people in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia who need pasture and water for their livestock face acute food shortages because of poor rains, a U.S.-based monitoring unit said [earlier this week].
In a report on the three East African countries, the Famine Early Warning System Network ([FEWS NET]) said about 2 million people in southern Somalia and more than one million in Ethiopia's Somali region need urgent humanitarian aid.
In Kenya, dozens of pastoralists and hundreds of their animals have already died of hunger and thirst during a three-month drought in the arid eastern and northern regions.
[FEWS NET] said the situation in the region was alarming because of reports of a rise in malnutrition, child deaths, livestock deaths and crop wilting in agricultural areas.
"(These) pre-famine conditions at this early stage are alarming," the [FEWS NET] report said of Ethiopia's Somali region.
"Drought has also affected neighbouring eastern Kenya where reports indicate a severe shortage of pasture and water and consequent poor physical condition and death of livestock."
Pastoralists move with the seasons to find food and water for their animals.
Kenyan officials say 2.5 million people are affected and President Mwai Kibaki announced on Dec. 24 that the government would give about $40 million to help the region.
Kibaki visited northern Kenya this week and ordered the military to provide emergency assistance there. Presidential spokesman Isaiya Kabira said the World Food Programme (WFP) had agreed to give the government money to conduct a speedy assessment to establish where help was needed most. The study is expected to be complete by next week.
Critics have accused the government of being slow to recognise the threat of famine and asked Kibaki to declare a state of emergency to attract more food donations.
But Kabira said the reponse had so far been satisfactory. "The response from the private sector has been very good," he told Reuters.
From the AP...
Drought has triggered extreme food shortages in three East African countries, putting millions of people at risk of famine as the lean dry season approaches, a humanitarian group said [earler in the week].
Pre-famine conditions have already emerged in eastern Ethiopia, including escalating malnutrition, reports of child deaths, and human and livestock migration, the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network said.
A preliminary assessment shows that more than a million Ethiopian cattle herders will face serious water, pasture and food shortages in the first half of 2006. The crisis will peak from January to March, the group said.
Drought has led to food shortages in neighboring Kenya, where 1.2 million people are expected to be affected over the next two months, a Kenyan official said. The government said it would take immediate emergency measures to deliver food to those at risk.
About 1.3 million Kenyans already receive food aid from the government because they don't harvest enough food or don't have sizable herds to sell.
In Somalia, about 2 million people need humanitarian aid, including food and water, medical supplies and security assistance. The drought has led to increases in admissions of severely malnourished children to feeding centers in the south.
About 70,000 tons of food aid are needed through June to feed those hit by drought in Somalia, but only 18,000 tons are available, the United Nations' food aid agency said.
From AFP...
Somalia's transitional president on Thursday appealed for $60-million in urgent aid for about two million southern Somalis facing severe food and water shortages amid an increasing threat of famine across large swaths of the drought-stricken Horn of Africa.
In a statement released as drought and pre-famine conditions have triggered dire warnings that many more millions are at risk of starvation in neighbouring Kenya and Ethiopia, President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed urged donors not to forget about Somalis in need.
"There is a humanitarian emergency throughout southern Somalia," he said, describing the situation as "volatile" among the mainly nomadic pastoralist population in the area.
"All the livestock and an estimated two million people face that danger."
Yusuf's statement was issued from the provincial town of Jowhar north of the capital where he and a part of Somalia's badly fractured transitional administration are based amid a deepening dispute over the seat of government with Mogadishu warlords.
In the Kenyan capital, a Somali government official said the appeal was for cash and "food, medicine, water and other essential goods" that are in short-supply in southern Somalia, which has been beset by chronic food insecurity due to poor rains, crop failures and insecurity.
On Wednesday, the United States government's Famine Early Warning System Network (Fews) issued emergency alerts for southern Somalia, Ethiopia's southern Somali region and Kenya's northeast, all of which have been badly affected by drought.
"The lives and livelihoods of the population in these regions will be at risk over the coming months," it said of southern Somalia. "Increased humanitarian interventions are urgently required."
"The situation is equally bad in northeastern Kenya and parts of Ethiopia bordering southern Somalia," Fews said.
In northeastern Kenya, where at least 20 people have died from hunger and related illnesses this month and the at-risk population is expected to rise from 1,3-million to 2,5-million by February, it said additional aid was urgently needed.
"Projected increases in beneficiary numbers combined with limited donor pledges and a food-aid pipeline that is expected to be exhausted in February 2006 require immediate action ... to avoid the loss of lives and livelihood assets," it said.
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, who visited the worst-hit areas this week, has already appealed for $100-million (€84-million) in emergency relief for victims of what the local media has dubbed the "Christmas famine."
In Ethiopia's southern Somali region, Fews said about one million pastoralists and their livestock were facing "pre-famine conditions" and that immediate assistance was needed to prevent the situation from deteriorating.
"Urgent responses [are] required to prevent an alarming escalation of food insecurity crisis" in the Somali region, it said.
While conditions are roughly similiar in all three nations, Somalia poses extraordinary challenges for relief workers as lawlessness and insecurity are rampant in the country which has had no functioning central government for the past 14 years.
A surge in piracy off the Somali coast this year -- in which two UN-chartered food aid vessels have been hijacked -- has severely affected the flow of relief supplies to the nation that the United Nations says is suffering from a largely forgotten "continuing humanitarian crisis".
Earlier this month, the United Nations launched an appeal for $174-million (€145-million) in assistance for the country noting that donors had thus far this year contributed only about half of the $162-million (€136-million) needed for 2005.
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