The UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) will release 11 million US dollars to provide urgent humanitarian assistance for 224,000 drought affected people in the northern parts of Somalia, Somalia local media outlets reported on Monday.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has said the fund will help partners to ramp up the provision of critical life-saving humanitarian assistance in the drought-affected areas of Puntland and Somaliland.

“This will include food and nutrition assistance, livestock vaccination, health care services, water and sanitation,” OCHA said.

The latest assessment by UN and relief organizations confirms persistently high and alarming levels of food insecurity and malnutrition in Somalia, with an estimated 4.7 million people, nearly 40 percent of the Somali population in need of humanitarian assistance.