1.4m Somali children acutely malnourished

Somalia, hit by drought and on the verge of famine, will count 1.4 million acutely malnourished children by the end of the year, up 50 percent from late 2016, the UN said yesterday.

The United Nations children's agency warned that 275,000 of those children were expected to be so severely malnourished that they could easily die.

Severe acute malnutrition is the most extreme and visible form of undernutrition, with victims often appearing skeletal and frail, and in urgent need of treatment to survive.

Such children "are nine times more likely to die of cholera, or diarrhoea or measles," UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado told reporters in Geneva.

"The combination of malnutrition and disease, plus displacement is deadly for children," she said.