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110 People From One Region In Somalia Alone Has Died From Hunger In Past 48 Hours Due To Drought

In this Saturday, Feb. 25, 2017 file photo, malnourished baby Ali Hassan, 9-months-old, left, is held by his mother Fadumo Abdi Ibrahim, who fled the drought in southern Somalia, at a feeding center in a camp in Mogadishu, Somalia. Somalia’s prime minister said Saturday, March 4, 2017 that 110 people have died from hunger in the past 48 hours in a single region as a severe drought threatens millions of people. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File)

Somalia’s prime minister said Saturday that 110 people have died from hunger in the past 48 hours in a single region — the first death toll announced in a severe drought threatening millions of people across the country.

Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire spoke with the Somali National Drought Committee about the drought, where he announced the death toll is from the Bay region in the southwest part of the country alone. Somalia’s government declared the drought a national disaster on Tuesday. The United Nations estimates that 5 million people in this Horn of Africa nation need aid, amid warnings of a full-blown famine.Somalia was one of four regions singled out by the U.N. secretary-general last month in a $4.4 billion aid appeal to avert catastrophic hunger and famine, along with northeast Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.

About 363,000 acutely malnourished children in Somalia “need urgent treatment and nutrition support, including 71,000 who are severely malnourished,” the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network has warned. The drought is the first crisis for Somalia’s newly elected Somali-American leader, President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed.

As water becomes scarce, animal carcasses – like this cow- are a common sight

The government has said the widespread hunger “makes people vulnerable to exploitation, human rights abuses and to criminal and terrorist networks.” There is the additional threat of cholera and other diseases due to lack of clean water in many areas, UN experts said, with some deaths from cholera having already been reported.

The U.N. humanitarian appeal for 2017 for Somalia is $864 million to provide assistance to 3.9 million people. But the U.N. World Food Program recently requested an additional $26 million plan to respond to the drought. This is not the first famine for Somalia in recent years, Nearly 260,000 people died during the famine that hit Somalia from 2010 to 2012. Last month, Save the Children warned Somalia was at “tipping point” and that the intensifying food crisis was on track to become “far worse” than the previous 2010-2012 famine, which claimed 260,000 lives.