Warning of massive humanitarian crisis

Up to 15 million people in Ethiopia and Eritrea could face famine conditions in the coming months, spelling a massive crisis for Africa, a senior UN relief official warned on Monday.

Speaking in New York on his return from a visit to the Horn of Africa, the UN's Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima said this figure, combined with 14 million people in southern Africa facing hunger and food shortages, was "quite an enormous number".

"The magnitude of the financial and logistical requirements of these two emergencies combined will present an enormous challenge in the coming months in Africa," he said.

Oshima said that Ethiopia and Eritrea had once again been struck by serious drought, leading to enormous humanitarian needs this year. "It will lessen next year, [but] if the worse case scenario prevails, we may be having a humanitarian crisis similar to the scale of the disaster we are now witnessing right now in southern Africa," he warned.

"The maize, the sorghum and other crops are either wilted or stunted and bearing no fruit, no crop, no grain - they are almost lost," he said. "Farmers have tried planting again and again, but rain came either too little or too late, and there was very little hope of reaping the crop that is on the ground."

An estimated 1.4 million people - over a third of the population - are facing food shortages in Eritrea. In Ethiopia, some 6 million currently need food aid, with a worse case scenario figure of up to 14 million in need next year.