Severely malnourished children are at risk of death unless they receive therapeutic feeding."The situation is of serious concern and comes at a time when we are already facing multiple drivers of needs, including drought and risk of flooding, conflict and access constraints as well as increased refugee returns," the United Nations said in a statement.Cereal production has been good in crop-growing parts of Somaliland in the north, but drought continues in other parts of the semi-autonomous region where most people are livestock herders, it said.1 million internally displaced people, many of whom are living in "appalling conditions", having fled their homes multiple times, the UN said.

The majority of the 260,000 people who died during Somalia's 2011 famine were children.Tens of thousands of refugees have returned to Somalia this year from the world's largest refugee camp, Dadaab, in Kenya as the government pushes ahead with plans to close it by November. Nairobi: The number of Somalis who do not have enough to eat has risen to five million, or more than four out of ten people, due to poor rains, the United Nations said on Tuesday, with children at the greatest risk of ill-health and death.Over 300,000 children under five are acutely malnourished and more than 50,000 are severely malnourished, the UN said, appealing for additional funding to support them.

The figure has increased by 300,000 since February, it said, amid ongoing conflict between the Islamist militant group al Shabaab and Somalia's African Union-backed government.The La Nina weather phenomenon is likely to worsen hunger as it will affect Somalia's October to January short rainy season, known as the Deyr, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network has said.Kenya says Dadaab, home to more than 300,000 mostly Somali refugees has been used as a base by al Shabaab in its attacks on Kenyan soil.Children are greatest risk of ill-health and death as over 3 lakh of them are acutely malnourished and over 50,000 severely malnourished.

The displaced are constantly threatened with China cereal containers Manufacturers forced eviction and violence against women is widespread, it said.Many are returning to south-central Somalia, the nation's breadbasket, where poor rainfall has reduced cereal production to half the long-term average, the UN said.La Nina, characterized by unusually cold temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, is predicted to hit swathes of east and southern Africa already hit by El Nino, a warming of the Pacific Ocean.Hunger is a particularly acute among Somalia's 1.