More than one million people in Somalia face acute food insecurity, as the food crisis worsens in the Horn of Africa nation, a latest food security report released in Nairobi on Tuesday showed.

The joint assessment by the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSNAU), a project managed by UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and other partners warned that the situation is likely to deteriorate further until October.

FSNAU Chief Technical Advisor for Somalia Daniel Molla told a news conference in Nairobi that the situation is dire and has taken a downturn in the last six months.

"The food insecurity situation today is up by 20 percent from over 800,000 six months ago. This brings the total number of people in need of humanitarian assistance or livelihood support to over three million," Molla said.

"Over 200,000 acutely malnourished children under the age of five require emergency nutrition supplement, access to clean water and better hygiene; whereas over 40,000 children are so severely malnourished that they will die if they do not receive medical treatment and therapeutic food," he added.

Molla said the dismal state of affairs has been occasioned by delayed and erratic rainfall between January and June which led to poor harvest coupled with an already extremely vulnerable population that cannot afford increased prices of food, in addition to the increase in insecurity in liberated areas of the embattled country.

"Part of our responsibility deals with analysis and alerting the international community, which we undertook last May and as a result contributions of donors and humanitarian partners have been able to step up efforts to urgently address the most critical needs across the country," Molla said.

He said the proposed voluntary repatriation of Somali refugees from neighboring host countries to liberated areas in Somalia and safe havens within the country's borders is still not tenable, because the country is still not ready to absorb a big number of refugees.

The report says the poor rains have also contributed to water shortages, poor livestock performance and reduced access to milk in several pastoral areas, particularly in parts of the Northeast and the Gedo region of Southern Somalia.

Recent nutrition survey results conducted across Somalia also indicate that an estimated 218,000 children under the age of five are acutely malnourished (nearly one in seven children under five), a seven percent increase since January 2014.

This figure includes 43,800 severely malnourished children who face an even higher risk of morbidity and death. Critical levels of acute malnutrition were found in 21 out of 50 population groups surveyed. Endi

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