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Somalia’s drought killed 43,000 last year

Reuters

NAIROBI — Somalia’s ongoing record drought killed as many as 43,000 people last year, half of them children younger than five, researchers said on Monday in the first attempt to estimate countrywide deaths.

After five consecutive failed rainy seasons, half of Somalia’s 17 million people are in urgent need of aid, the United Nations has said, although parts of the country avoided a famine declaration last year that some experts had been expecting.

The research, led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, found that half the deaths were children younger than five, and that the crisis could prove worse than Somalia’s last major drought in 2017 and 2018.

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2023-03-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

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