"The drought is now affecting more than one million people in the south of the country," Silvano Langa, head of the National Disaster Management Institute, said at a meeting with officials from the UN World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

"Only 150,000 people have got food assistance in June," Langa said, adding that the "target is being revised" for the affected population in the regions of Maputo, Gaza and Inhambane.

Langa said he hoped the shortage would not be as "acute as in past years when we had to ward off the combined effects of drought and war."

He said he was not launching an "urgent international appeal" for help, but was counting more on "bilateral aid."

A former Portuguese colony, Mozambique gained independence on June 25, 1975, only to plunge into war a year later that was to last until 1992, claiming up to one million lives.

More than half of the population of 17 million lives on less than a dollar a day.

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