UN warns of millions threatened with hunger

WFP on Tuesday warned that “an unusual shortage of rains across a wide area of the Horn of Africa could drastically affect the upcoming harvests and threaten millions of people with hunger in 1999.” A statement said an extended dry spell with only scattered rains during May and June was likely to slash crop and livestock production, worsening an “already precarious food situation”. “All the signs point to a potential crisis ... and we are trying to preempt that”, WFP Information Officer Lindsey Davies told IRIN on Wednesday. In Ethiopia, for instance, the agency has received reports of people eating leaves and berries - ‘famine foods’ generally eaten much later in the ‘hungry season’ - and of villages deserted as people left in search of food, Davies added.