MOGADISHU: Muslims around the world mark sundown during the holy month of Ramadan with extravagant dinners to break their daily fasts. That kind of nighttime celebration is unthinkable this year for most Somalis, who already are suffering empty stomachs during the worst famine in a generation.

Tens of thousands of Somalis already have fled starvation to the world’s largest refugee camp in neighboring Kenya, where Mohammad Mohamud Abdulle said people can’t partake in the fast without food.

“Today is the worst day I ever faced. All my family are hungry and I have nothing to feed them,” Abdulle said on Monday. “I feel the hunger that forced me from my home has doubled here.”

Somalis fleeing famine say they simply don’t have enough food to prepare a traditional feast to end a day of fasting. Refugees say they have been unintentionally fasting for weeks or months, but without the end-of-day meal to regain their strength.

“I cannot fast because I cannot get food to break it and eat before the morning,” said Nur Ahmad, a father of six at a camp for internally displaced people in Mogadishu called Badbado. Ahmad’s wife died last year during childbirth, he said.

The U.N. says more than 11 million people in the Horn of Africa are in need of food aid, but that 2.2 million need aid in a region of south-central Somalia controlled by the Al-Qaeda-linked militant group Al-Shabaab, which has not let many aid agencies operate in its territory.

However, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced Monday they had distributed food to 162,000 people in Somalia’s insurgent-ruled southern regions, while the U.N. food agency increased its relief airlifts that kicked off last week.

Since Wednesday, the WFP has delivered more than 80 tons of emergency food aid to malnourished children in Mogadishu and expanded the distribution to Doolow region in the south of Somalia.

“Another aircraft arrived today, the sixth flight since the airlift began last Wednesday – the airlift is an ongoing operation and will continue,” said WFP spokesman David Orr in the war-torn Somali capital.

“That brings the total amount delivered into Mogadishu to over 80 tons of specialized highly nutritious food for malnourished children.”

Malnutrition rates in Somalia are the highest in the world, and the relentless conflict and drought have left millions in need of humanitarian aid.

Somalia has been the worst affected country in the Horn of Africa by the drought that has forced thousands of people to flee to neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya.

In the world’s largest refugee camp in eastern Kenya, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF launched a mass vaccination against polio and measles. Aid workers say they fear outbreaks of diseases in the overcrowded Dadaab camps, which currently host some 380,000 people and where some 1,300 Somalis arrive every day.

“Teams are going from tent to tent, to make sure all children aged between six months and five years are given life-saving vaccines,” said Melissa Corkum, a UNICEF spokeswoman.

“There are cases of measles in the camp as children are coming from Somalia, where immunization is very low.”