Mogadishu: Some 180 more people have starved to death in south Somalia because of the unrelenting famine caused by the country’s worst drought in decades.
A total of 146 people, mostly women and children, died within the last 24 hours in the drought-hit Bay and Bakool regions of southern Somalia, Press TV reported on Wednesday.
Thirty-four people, including 30 children under the age of four, also died from hunger in Elasha Biyaha village, located 17 kilometers (11 miles) southwest of the capital Mogadishu.
According to the World Food Programme (WFO), drought and the famine have affected more than 11.8 million people in the Horn of Africa and created a triangle of hunger where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia meet.
Somalia has been the worst-hit country by what is being described as the worst drought in the Horn of Africa in 60 years.
The United Nations has warned that more than thirteen children out of every 10,000 aged less than five die in the Somalia famine zone every day.
“This means that 10 percent of children under five are dying every 11 weeks. These figures are truly heart-wrenching,” UN representative to Somalia Augustine Mahiga told the UN Security Council on August 10.
Meanwhile, a cholera outbreak has claimed at least 53 lives in Hiran region, located 215 kilometers (134 miles) north of Mogadishu.
Combination of poor sanitation conditions, scarcity of safe clean drinking water, overcrowding and high malnutrition has increased cases of cholera and waterborne diseases in Somalia.
According to the WHO, some 75 percent of all cases of highly infectious acute watery diarrhea are among children under the age of five.
The last major cholera outbreak in Somalia was in 2007 with an estimated 67,000 cases.
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