Three years after famine in Somalia killed a quarter of a million people in six months, aid agencies warned Sunday a new catastrophe is looming unless urgent aid arrives.
A joint statement issued by a group of charities and aid agencies said there were more than 300,000 malnourished children in the east African country and 2.9 million people in need of life-saving help.
"Aid agencies today caution, again, that the signs of a drought are re-emerging in Somalia and urge for these not to be ignored in order to avoid a relapse into the conditions of the 2011 catastrophe," the statement said.
Without funding, the charities warned aid programmes could be forced to shut down even as the number of people facing starvation in the war-ravaged country is expected to rise, with 1.1 million internally displaced people the hardest hit.