A regional governor in Somalia has appealed for urgent aid following the deaths of about four hundred people over the past two months.

In an interview with the French news agency, AFP, the governor of the southern province of Bakol, Aden Mohamed Nur, said food shortages and lack of medicine were the main reason.

Mr Nur said the situation would worsen in the coming weeks unless relief aid was delivered quickly. A local medical officer said many children under five were weakened by malnutrition and were unable to resist infections, but that he had no drugs to prescribe. Last month, the World Food Programme said one-million people in southern Somalia were facing severe food shortages for the fourth year in a row because of poor harvests.

Aid agencies have appealed for around seventeen-million dollars to avert what they described as a humanitarian tragedy.