Several UN agencies, including the United Nations' Children Fund, the World Food Program as well as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have already issued appeals for drought relief for east Africa.

The drought threatens millions across the Horn of Africa, 1.7 million of whom live in lawless Somalia where relief operations are hampered by rampant insecurity, war-shattered infrastructure and a lack of even the most basic services.

In Somalia, dehydration has killed at least seven people in the past month as severe water shortages from a drought force many to drink their own urine, the aid group Oxfam International said Thursday.

It said in the southern and central part of the country communities were living in searing 40-degree centigrade (104 Fahrenheit) heat with only three glasses a day per person for drinking, washing and cooking.

In neighboring Kenya, the drought-related death toll of at least 40 rose as police said four women on a desperate hunt for water were killed in the collapse of a nearly dry well in the parched northwest.

The region is set to remain in the grip of drought until at least April, according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

The UN weather agency said several of the worst-affected areas have recorded their driest months since 1961, it added.

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East African Livestock Face Decimation From Drought
Nairobi (AFP) Feb 16 - Livestock across east Africa are facing complete "decimation" from a drought that has already killed tens of thousands of animals across the region, a British veterinary charity said Thursday.

With drought-related human deaths already reported in Kenya and Somalia, cattle, camels and donkeys are dying at alarming rates in some areas, adding to the misery of their livestock-dependent pastoralist populations, it said.

In Kenya's northeast Mandera district alone, 90 percent of donkeys, 70 percent of cattle and 60 percent of camels have perished since the drought began to bite, the Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad (SPANA) said.

"It's horrendous, cataclysmic," the group's chief Jeremy Hulme told AFP. "If camels start dying, then things are really tough."

The charity lauded international appeals for aid for the millions of people affected by the drought but decried their omission of assistance for animals, noting the central importance they play in nomadic life.

"For too long now there's been a mind-set among those involved in emergency relief response which results in little value being placed on the role of working animals and livestock," it said in a statement.

"These are people whose culture and social structure can only be sustained if there is a relief effort in parallel with the humanitarian response which encompasses their livestock," SPANA said.

The group said it would donate eight tonnes of fodder and forage each day for a month to feed animals in Mandera and urged others to follow suit.

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Somalis Drink Urine As Drought Kills From Dehydration
Nairobi (AFP) Feb 16 - Dehydration has killed at least seven people in Somalia in the past month as severe water shortages from an east African drought force many to drink their own urine, an aid group said Thursday.

In neighboring Kenya, the drought-related death toll of at least 40 rose as police said four women on a desperate hunt for water were killed in the collapse of a nearly dry well in the parched northwest.

And in both countries, along with Ethiopia, a veterinary charity warned that livestock face complete "decimation," further threatening pastoralist populations without urgent action.

In southern and central Somalia Oxfam International said communities were living in searing 40-degree centigrade (104 Fahrenheit) heat with only three glasses a day per person for drinking, washing and cooking.

"The situation is as bad as I can remember," said Abdullahi Maalim Hussein, a Somali elder who accompanied a recent Oxfam assessment mission to the worst-hit areas.

"Some people are dying and children are drinking their own urine because there is simply no water available for them to drink," he said in a statement released in Nairobi by the British-based group.

The tiny amount of water available, for which many families have to walk up to 70 kilometers (45 miles) to get, is one-twentieth of the daily supply recommended by minimum humanitarian standards, Oxfam said.

The group's assessment mission said at least seven people and potentially many more had already died from drought-related dehydration since mid-January and that the number would almost certainly rise even with emergency aid.

"The situation will get worse unless swift action is taken," said Mohamed Elmi, Oxfam's regional program manager. "People cannot survive on just three glasses of water a day when the temperature is hitting 40 degrees."

The drought threatens millions across east Africa, 1.7 of whom live in lawless Somalia where relief operations are hampered by rampant insecurity, war-shattered infrastructure and a lack of even the most basic services.

Of the Somalis at risk, Oxfam said about 200,000 living along the Kenya-Somalia border in the Gedo and Lower Juba regions are in dire need of urgent water supplies.

About eight million people in four east African countries, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, are now in need of food assistance to stave off drought-related starvation.

Livestock-dependent pastoralist communities that live in the affected areas have been hardest hit as cattle, goats and camels die in unprecendented numbers from hunger and thirst.

Many international appeals for aid have focused on dire shortages of food and animal fodder, but Oxfam said the lack of drinking water in Somalia was critical.

"As well as food, these communities desperately need water," it said. "Without water children will die, and the livestock on which pastoralists depend will end up as rotting corpses around dry wells."

In Kenya's northwest Turkana district, dried up rivers and barren boreholes led the deaths of the four women, including two sisters, in the well collapse late last week in a remote area near the Kenyan-Sudanese border, police said.

"They were buried alive on Friday after the sands of the well caved in," Turkana Police Commander Julius Muli told AFP, adding that his office had not learned of the collapse until Monday. "Water shortage here is a big problem."

In northeast Kenya, the British-based Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad (SPANA) said that 90 percent of donkeys, 70 percent of cattle and 60 percent of camels have perished since the drought began to bite.

Without urgent action, it said livestock throughout the region "face decimation" as it launched a drive to provide emergency fodder for the animals.

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