UN: $864 million appeal for Somalia only 31 percent funded

The United Nations says the $864 million U.N. humanitarian appeal for Somalia where a worsening drought threatens millions of people with famine is only 31 percent funded.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters Wednesday that “the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate.”

He says nearly 257,000 people left their homes between November and February and are internally displaced, and some 4,300 Somalis crossed the border into Ethiopia.

Haq says there are more than 13,000 cases of “acute watery diarrhea” and cholera with more than 300 deaths from those illnesses reported since the beginning of the year.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who visited Somalia last week, will chair a U.N. Security Council meeting Thursday on the humanitarian and political situation in the Horn of Africa nation.

-AP