Somalia affected by drought and famine

The head of the UN refugee agency, Antonio Guterres, has made a rare visit to Somalia's capital. He's concerned about the dire refugee situation in the country's south, noting that aid groups are still unable to access many of the 3.6 million people at risk of starvation. Antonio Guterres, UN high commissioner for refugees, said, "I think it's now clear that things are now scaling up but I think its also clear that the dimension of the problem is out of the proportion with what has been possible to do till now. We all need to put together all the efforts that exists like UN effort and NGOs." Years of conflict and now a famine sweeping across the south of the country have swollen Mogadishu's population. Poor living conditions and lack of running water have been exacerbated across the city by the influx of refugees. Over 100,000 refugees have arrived over the last two months from across southern Somalia where a devastating drought is biting the hardest. Emergency relief operations across the region have been hampered by the al-Qaeda-affiliated al Shabaab rebels, who have banned Western aid agencies from operating in the area. Drought and famine have killed more than 29-thousand children in the past three months in southern Somalia alone, and some 12.4 million people in the Horn of Africa are being affected by drought.