NAIROBI, July 22 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations agencies warned on Tuesday that hunger on a massive scale is looming across the Horn of Africa as a combination of drought and high food prices have left more than 14.6 million in need of emergency food aid.

    Addressing a news conference in Nairobi, UNICEF, WFP and UN humanitarian agency, OCHA (the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) including Care International said the main cause of the crisis is a prolonged drought across large parts of the Horn which has been exacerbated by the soaring costs of food and fuel.

    "The number of people affected by this severe famine is expected to rise in the Great Horn of Africa and IDPs and refugees are the most affected," Besida Tonwe, head of OCHA Regional Support Office for West Africa, told journalists.

    "The situation in the Horn of Africa is very serious and most governments lack mechanisms to raise funds to assist the vulnerable," she said.

    Tonwe said Ethiopia is the epicenter of the crisis, with millions of people in need of emergency aid in the next few months.

    But the risk of starvation has spread in the Horn that runs from Somalia and Djibouti through to Kenya and Uganda.

    In southern Ethiopia, some 4.6 million people are now in need of emergency food support, adding to the 5.7 million who were already receiving help under a government safety net program.

    The impact is compounded because some countries, such as Ethiopia, have nearly exhausted their food reserves as rising prices forced the governments to subsidize food this year.

    WFP said that recurrent failure of rains on top of sharp rises in fuel and food prices is crippling local agricultural production and putting at risk the livelihood of millions of people.

    WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon said the UN and international relief agencies had found that 1.2 million people are in need of emergency food assistance in Kenya.

    "We have rising food and fuel prices which have worsened suffering in Kenya. About 1.2 million people are in need of emergency assistance, especially in the north-western pastoral districts," said Smerdon.

    "This is a regional crisis and the number of people affected is higher than during the 2006 regional drought when about 11 million were at risk," he said.

    "Rising food prices mean there are more people who cannot afford food even if it is for sale in their area."

    The agencies said the number of people in Somalia in need of humanitarian aid has risen to 2.6 million this year, representing 35 percent of the population.

    The latest assessments have revealed that global acute malnutrition levels have risen to between 18 and 24 percent in some areas, well above the 15 percent which is considered to constitute an emergency.

    UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Mark Bowden said there was an acute crisis caused by conflict, drought, and price rises in basic commodities.

    Bowden noted that, partly as a result of the devaluation of the Somali shilling, the price of imported rice had risen by up to 350percent between the beginning of 2007 and May 2008.

    "Somalia has suffered three consecutive famines and the ongoing conflict has forced 300,000 people to flee the capital Mogadishu creating additional problems for populations facing severe food shortages," Bowden told journalists in Nairobi.

    "We are now estimating that by the end of the year 3.5 million people will need assistance in Somalia, a frightening figure to have to deal with," Bowden said..

    In Djibouti, the UN agencies said 115,000 people need food aid and 707,000 in the Karamoja region of northern Uganda. The agencies said Eritrea was also suffering from successive rain failures.