U.N. agencies warned Tuesday of severe malnutrition and possible famine in the Central African Republic (CAR), calling on donors to provide urgent funding to avert the crisis in the impoverished country where a year of conflict already has killed thousands of people and driven 750,000 others from their homes. "We urgently need support from donors so we won't start running out of food in January," Denise Brown, the World Food Program (WFP) regional director for West Africa, said in Bangui, the CAR capital. "We are providing food for hungry people wherever we can in CAR. But insecurity is the biggest challenge." The Rome-based FAO has been able to raise only $4.3 million of the $61 million needed to help 1.8 million people, of a total CAR population of 4.6 million.
