The food security situation in the southern Bakol region is rapidly deteriorating, the Food Security Assessment Unit (FSAU) warned last week.

FSAU, funded by the EC and FAO, carried out a rapid assessment in the region last month along with USAID's Famine Early Warning System (FEWS).

Poor dry season rainfall over large areas of the Bakol region had led to extreme crop losses almost everywhere, representing the seventh consecutive poor harvest in the area.

FSAU and FEWS both confirmed reports of recent food-related human deaths. Deteriorating food security conditions across the border in Ethiopia were making the outlook for Bakol even bleaker, FSAU stressed.

Some 70 percent of people were in need of assistance and many agro-pastoralists in the Hudur, Wajid and Rab-Dure districts had left their villages in search of help.

"Visible signs of starvation are already seen throughout the Bakol region," FSAU said. "Malnutrition is widespread and increasing." The resumption of food deliveries to the region was urgently needed to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe, it pointed out.