- GENEVA: The United Nations says famine will probably spread to all of southern Somalia within a month and force tens of thousands more people to flee into the capital of Mogadishu.
UN refugee agency spokeswoman Fatoumata Lejeune-Kaba says “all regions of southern Somalia are likely to be facing famine” by late August or early September, adding to the massive influx into Mogadishu.
She told reporters Tuesday in Geneva that 100,000 people have already fled to the war-ravaged city because of famine — 27,100 in July alone.
She says before then the city took in 370,000 people fleeing the nation’s violence and instability.
The UN’s humanitarian aid office says a quarter of Somalia’s 7.5 million population is now internally uprooted.