Growing risk of 'mass' starvation deaths in Africa: UN

A malnourished child being weighed by Unicef aid worker at a facility in Baidoa town, Somalia, on March 15, 2017. PHOTO: AFP

GENEVA (AFP) - The United Nations warned Tuesday (April 11) that "the risk of mass deaths from starvation ... is growing" among people in conflict and drought-hit areas of the Horn of Africa, Yemen and Nigeria.

Due to drought and a "severe" funding shortfall "an avoidable humanitarian crisis ... is fast becoming an inevitability", added UN refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards, cautioning that the current crisis could be worse than the 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa that killed 260,000 people.

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