"NAIROBI, Kenya — A new report says an estimated 43,000 people died amid Somalia’s longest drought on record last year and half of them likely were children under 5 years old.

It is the first official death toll announced in the drought withering large parts of the Horn of Africa.

At least 18,000 people, and as many as 34,000, are forecast to die in the first six months of this year.

“The current crisis is far from over,” says the report released Monday by the World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s agency and carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine."

Cara Anna reports for the Associated Press March 20, 2023. [2]