Up to 16 million people in Ethiopia andEritrea are facing food shortages, a World Food Programme officialsaid today.
Donors are providing little assistance, he added.
"The situation is very grim," Wagdi Othman, the WFPspokesman in Eritrea told journalists. "We have no food in thepipeline to feed millions of hungry people in December."
The most vulnerable people in the drought-affected areas ofEthiopia, such as children and the elderly, have already starteddying from the food shortages, aid workers say.
Ethiopia has appealed to the international community for twomillion tonnes of food to feed the hungry, but so far no pledgeshave been made, he said. He blamed the food crisis in southernAfrica for the lack of attention to Ethiopia and Eritrea.
"Because of the magnitude of the drought crisis in southernAfrican countries, Ethiopia and the rest of the Horn of Africacountries are receiving less attention from donors," Othmansaid.
The WFP says 14.4 million people in Zambia, Zimbabwe,Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho are under threat.
Othman spoke as a fresh consignment of 119,000 tonnes ofwheat from the United States arrived at the Port of Djibouti onits way to Ethiopia, but said the food was not aimed at thehungry.Instead, it would be used to replenish the country'sstrategic food reserves from which the WFP had borrowed to feedthose stricken with hunger after its own stocks had ran low.
"The consignment will be paid back to the country's foodsecurity organisation for food that had been borrowed andalready distributed," Othman said.
The drought in Ethiopia and Eritrea is blamed onexceptionally dry weather resulting from failures of the shortBelg rainy season (February to May) and late start and earlycessation of the main Meher rains (June to September).
A joint U.N. and non-governmental crop assesement missionwhich visited Ethiopia's different regions reported that cropproduction in 2002/03 will be far less than the country producedduring the last four years.