NAIROBI — More than 6 million people in drought-hit
areas of eastern and southern
Ethiopia will need "life-saving"
assistance this year, the
UN's emergency response agency said in a new report.
اضافة اعلان
The drought is adding to the humanitarian crisis in
Ethiopia, where the war between government forces and the rebel
Tigray People's Liberation Army (TPLF) in the north of the country has already left millions
there in desperate need of aid.
The drought in the Somali, East and South Oromia regions is
having a "devastating impact on the lives and livelihood of pastoralist
and agro-pastoralist communities living in the area after the third consecutive
failed rainy season", the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs said in a statement posted online this week.
It said more than 6.4 million people in the afflicted areas
were estimated to require food assistance this year, and that while the
Ethiopian government and its humanitarian partners were working to tackle the
crisis, "the response is not commensurate with the dire need."
About 3 million people in Somali and South Oromia were
suffering from water shortages, while an unknown number have been forced from
their homes.
Altogether, about 200,000 children and pregnant or lactating
women were suffering from moderate malnutrition and 14,000 children acute
malnutrition, it said.
Several hundred thousand livestock deaths have also been
reported because of a lack of water and feed, according to the report.
In November, the
UN's World Food Program said the number of
people facing hunger across northern Ethiopia because of the conflict had
surged to 9.4 million, in Tigray and also the neighboring regions of Amhara and
Afar.
In Tigray itself, which is under a de facto blockade, the UN
has said that hundreds of thousands of people are living in famine-like
conditions.
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