Millions of people in Ethiopia are facing starvation amid the worst drought in years, charities have warned.

Around 4.6 million people in the Horn of Africa need emergency food aid to tide them through to the next harvest in November.

Another 5.7 million who receive food and cash under a regular welfare programme live in areas where drought is biting and need extra help.

Save the Children is hoping to raise around £10 million to help 900,000 of the most at risk people, including 325,000 children, who are bearing the brunt of the food crisis in Ethiopia.

The charity is running a major emergency response in six of the worst-affected areas in Ethiopia to deliver life-saving health, nutrition, agricultural, sanitation and child protection assistance to suffering communities.

To donate go to https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/secure/51_5883.htm

Meanwhile, Concern Worldwide said farmers in the African country should now be planting crops for an autumn harvest, but most have already run out of seeds. Ethiopia's February harvest failed due to the worst drought in years.

Lyndall Stein, Concern Worldwide's chief executive, said: "I have just come back from Ethiopia and I have seen the desperate struggle faced by so many families."

"Despite their resilience, drought and soaring food prices have simply engulfed the people. Levels of malnutrition are rising and if we don't get seeds to people in the next two weeks they will be facing catastrophe."

The Ethiopian government says 75,000 children are already suffering from the most severe form of malnutrition.

The dire conditions have revived memories of the country's 1984-1985 famine which killed some 1 million people.

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