In a statement released as drought and pre-famine conditions have also hit neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia triggering dire warnings that many more millions of people are at-risk of starvation, President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed urged donors not to forget about Somalis in need.

"There is a humanitarian emergency throughout southern Somalia," he said, describing the situation as "volatile" among the mainly nomadic pastoralist population in the area.

"All the livestock and an estimated two million people face that danger."

Yusuf's statement was issued from the provincial town of Jowhar, north of the capital, where he and a part of Somalia's badly fractured transitional administration are based in a dispute over the seat of government with Mogadishu warlords.

In the Kenyan capital, a Somali government official said the appeal was for cash and "food, medicine, water and other essential goods" that are in short supply in southern Somalia, which has been beset by chronic food insecurity due to poor rains, crop failures and insecurity.

On Wednesday, the US-funded Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) issued emergency alerts for southern Somalia, Ethiopia's southern Somali region and Kenya's northeast, all of which have been badly affected by drought.

"The lives and livelihoods of the population in these regions will be at risk over the coming months," it said. "Increased humanitarian interventions are urgently required."

In northeastern Kenya, where at least 20 people have died from hunger and related illnesses this month and the at-risk population is expected to rise from 1.3 million to 2.5 million by February, FEWS said additional aid was urgently needed.

"Projected increases in beneficiary numbers combined with limited donor pledges and a food-aid pipeline that is expected to be exhausted in February 2006 require immediate action... to avoid the loss of lives and livelihood assets," it said.

In Ethiopia's southern Somali region, FEWS said about one million pastoralists and their livestock were facing "pre-famine conditions" and that immediate assistance was needed to prevent the situation from deteriorating.

"Urgent responses (are) required to prevent an alarming escalation of food insecurity crisis" in the Somali region, it said.

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