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The FAO
has warned that the food supply in southern Somalia is deteriorating
rapidly, describing the situation as "very alarming".
Despite
a favourable harvest in February, some 650,000 people were
faced with severe food shortages with Bakool, Gedo, Bay and
Hiran Regions worst affected, an FAO report released this
week said.
An international
journalist who visited Wajid in Bakool this week, told IRIN
he met women whose young children and babies had died from
hunger over the last few weeks.
He said
he had returned to Somalia after a "fruitless search" for
food across neighbouring Ethiopian and Kenyan borders.
Migration
is described by aid agencies as a local coping mechanism,
which has been affected by the regional drought.
Kevin
Farrell, WFP Country Director for Somalia, told IRIN that
north and northwest Bakool and Gedo had become the chief concern.
"We are
increasingly concerned about the situation in that area,"
he said. He added that if the expected rains failed or were
below average, the area affected was expected to increase
rapidly, and the intensity of the crisis deepen.
Aid workers
in Wajid have had to abandon assessment missions for now and
are concentrating on distributing emergency supplies of unimix.
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