MOGADISHU, Somalia — Cholera outbreaks are sweeping through famine-ridden villages in southwestern Somalia, killing nearly 400 people in the past two weeks, local authorities said Monday.
Five children died from the infectious disease during the past 24 hours in Dinsor in the Bay region, while 30 have been killed since Friday in the Gedo region, officials said.
"The situation is already out of hand as the disease is spreading dangerously within villages already devastated by famine," the Bay region's governor, Mohamed Ali Aden Qalinleh, told reporters. He said more than 1,000 people registered in newly set up quarantines.
In Gedo, an average of five people are dying from a combination of the disease and drought every day, local authorities said.
The impact of the disease, which is spread by contaminated water, is being worsened by the same drought that has parched parts of neighboring Ethiopia, Kenya, Eritrea and Sudan.
The U.N.'s World Food Program estimates 1.2 million Somalis are threatened with severe food shortages.
On Sunday, a 50-truck convoy carrying more than 580 tons of relief food became the first convoy since June to make the trek from the capital, Mogadishu, to the town of Baidoa, en route to drought-stricken areas.
Intermittent fighting had made the road too dangerous to travel since the Rahanwein Resistance Army retook Baidoa, 112 miles northwest of Mogadishu, from the forces of south Mogadishu warlord Hussein Aidid in June.
The convoy carrying maize, sorghum, beans and porridge meal for the U.N. World Food Program and CARE-International was accompanied by 400 armed militiamen, said Abukar Abdi Shireh, a spokesman for the transporters.
Somalia has had no central government since January 1991.