Worsening drought in Somalia leaves 2 million at risk warns UN

February 4, 2011 – Nairobi – War-torn Somalia is facing what could be an “extremely serious” drought, a senior United Nations aid official warned Thursday. UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos told journalists in Nairobi that Somalia was “teetering on the brink of much larger-scale disaster” due to countrywide drought. “What happens with main rains in April, that is point at which we will have a much clearer idea if impact will be as bad as in previous years,” she said at the end of a three-day visit to Somalia and Kenya. “The hardest impact at the moment is in Somalia, but is having a regional impact as well.” Some 2 million Somalis, or 27 per cent of the population, are already in crisis, Amos warned. South and central Somalia is in the grip of a bloody Islamist insurgency, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives since early 2007 and exacerbated problems brought on by cyclical drought in the Horn of Africa nation. –Earth Times