At least three foreign relief organizations -- the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Action Against Hungerand World Vision -- said immediate emergency assistance was needed to help some 2.5 million people survive the crisis.

A day earlier local Red Cross and hospital officials said the death toll from malnutrition had risen to 40 since the beginning of December.

Aid officials described the situation as disastrous for the largely pastoralist population amid widespread livestock fatalities, and government spokesman Alfred Mutua conceded that conditions were dire.

"We believe that people are suffering and people might have died as a result as hunger, we cannot be in denial and say that people are not dying," Mutua told reporters in the capital.

The IFRC urged donors to contribute 12.7 million dollars (10.5 million euros) to help deal with "a critical lack of water for both human and animal consumption across many districts" where it said the mortality rate for livestock, essential to the nomadic peoples there, could surge from 30 to 70 percent.

"Communities may soon be wiped out since they depend entirely on livestock," the Red Cross said. "Given the dramatic situation, it is vital that the international community respond by supporting the government of Kenya appeal for food assistance."

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has declared the situation a "national disaster," ordered the military to assist in food and water distribution and appealed over Christmas for 100 million dollars (84 million euros) to fill a shortfall in relief funding.

"We would like more individuals and organizations to support our efforts," Kibaki told local donors Thursday. "The government is handling the situation but we do not have adequate resources so we appreciate the assistance we get from our partners in development."

Livestock Development Minister Joseph Munyao said government had allocated five million dollars (4.2 million euros) to buy livestock from desperate villagers facing death due to lack of pasture.

The European Commission said it had released two million euros (2.4 million dollars) for humanitarian aid.

Despite those efforts, the severity of situation has worsened and called for urgent action, according to aid groups.

In a statement, World Vision described the dire conditions as a "grim food crisis".

"The situation in Mandera has really gone from bad to disastrous," said Kelly Delaney, a nutritionist with AAH, referring to one of the worst-hit regions in Kenya's far northeast on the Somali border.

Emergency feeding centers in the area saw a 29-percent increase in the number of children admitted in the first three weeks of December over the entire month of November and many of those "are more severely malnourished than those the organization has seen in the past," AAH said in a statement.

"More international support is essential," it said, noting that the mass deaths of cattle, goats and camels were a dire indication of worse times to come. "This population depends on cattle for food, transportation and economic viability."

On Wednesday, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) issued a similar alert, saying that the situation across three drought-stricken countries in the Horn of Africa -- Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia -- was critical.

About 6.5 million people in northeast Kenya, neighboring southern Somalia and southeast Ethiopia, are threatened by the drought, according to the US-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS).

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