Children at a local NGO camp in the port town of Kismayo, Somalia, Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2007, where more than eight thousand Children live in camps. (AP Photo/ Nasteh Dahir Farah)

MOGADISHU, Somalia, September 12, 2007 –   Thousands of Somali children were facing starvation as attacks continued around the south of the country, the health minister and UNICEF said Wednesday.

"We have been receiving reports of an alarming rate of malnutrition in southern Somali regions, where thousands of children are on the verge of death," said Health Minister Isse Weheliye.

"The cause is not only due to lack of food, drought and displacement but also increased prices of the essential food stuffs, or poverty," added the minister.

UNICEF announced on Wednesday that a recent malnutrition survey showed 83,000 children in central and southern Somalia suffer from malnutrition — 13,500 of whom were severely malnourished and at risk of starvation. Levels of malnutrition among children under 5 in some areas have been above World Health Organization emergency levels since last May.

"UNICEF is very concerned that their numbers might increase with continued civil strife, limited humanitarian access to these areas, food insecurity and a depressed economy," the head of UNICEF in Somalia, Christian Balslev-Olesen, said in a statement. The organization already feeds about 15,000 Somali children a month but says its operations are curtailed by insecurity.

UNICEF says the number of people who need humanitarian assistance in Somalia has increased from one to 1.5 million since January 2007. Most of those are children and women.

The Horn of Africa nation has been mired in chaos since 1991, when rival warlords banded together to overthrow dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre and then turned on each other. There are few jobs and little security. The country is awash with weapons and divided between warring clans. There are daily battles between a weak U.N.-backed transitional government and its Ethiopian allies and Islamist fighters, who vowed to conduct an Iraq-style insurgency after they were overthrown last December.

Thousands of Somalis have been killed in the fighting this year alone, and many more are at risk due to the collapse of health care and lack of food. They are women like Hamdi Abdulqadir, a 35-year-old mother, who said, "Two of my three children are severely malnourished and are on the verge of death because I do not have any food to feed them .... No one is going to help us. We wait for God's help."

In the latest violence in the arid Horn of Africa nation, three civilians were killed and government soldier wounded in a grenade attack on a soldier's convoy in the capital of Mogadishu, a witness said. Dahir Yusuf Igale, a local business man, said three grenades were thrown at a military convoy. The soldiers killed three civilians when they opened fire in response, he said. Police spokesman Col. Abdi Wahid confirmed the attack but had no word on casualties.

In the southern port city of Kismayo, a prominent business man and clan leader was shot three times in the head on Tuesday night. City Police Chief Ibrahim Khalif said officers were investigating the murder of Mohamud Yusuf Ruke.

Source: AP