SOMALIA 5 million don’t get enough to eat, U.N. says

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Tears filled Amina Nur’s eyes as she cuddled her frail-looking child with a sunken chest.

She and her family returned to Somalia five months ago after several years in a refugee camp in neighboring Kenya, but she regrets that now.

“We decided to return home voluntarily, but that was a wrong decision,” the mother of six said.

“The small money they gave us ran out, and since then we have no assistance to survive.”

Nur is among thousands of Somalis who fled at the height of a devastating famine which killed over half a million people in this Horn of Africa nation in 2013.

But now they are hungry again.

A new U.N. report says 5 million people in Somalia are not getting enough food. That’s more than 40 percent of the population. It blames, in part, poor rainfall in southern and central Somalia, “the breadbasket of the country.”

The report released Tuesday says the number of people who are food insecure has increased by 300,000 since February.

More than 300,000 children under 5 are acutely malnourished.

More than half of those without enough food have been displaced from their homes, sometimes multiple times, the report says.

More than 1 million people inside Somalia are displaced after years of violence, famine and attacks by homegrown al-Shabab extremists.

The al Qaeda-linked group continues to carry out attacks in the capital and elsewhere.