MOGADISHU (AP/Reuters) — 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 Mohamed Mohamud Abdulle said people can't fast without food “to console the soul” at sundown, AP reported.
“Today is the worst day I ever faced. All my family are hungry and I have nothing to feed them,” Abdulle said on Monday, the first day of the Muslim holy month. “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 Ahmed, a father of six at a camp for internally displaced people in Mogadishu called Badbado. Ahmed's wife died last year during childbirth, he said.
For most of the Muslim world, Ramadan this year falls at a time of rising food prices and political upheaval. Food prices typically spike during the Muslim religious month, and the elaborate dinners many in the Middle East put on to break the daily fast drive a deep hole in household budgets.
The UN says more than 11 million people in the Horn of Africa need 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-Shabab, which has not let many aid agencies operate in its territory, including the UN World Food Program.
In a bit of good news, though, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Monday it is distributing food to 162,000 people in south-central Somalia affected by drought and armed violence. The food distributions in south-central are the first large-scale distributions in that regions since the beginning of the year, it said.
“This operation demonstrates the ICRC's ability to deliver emergency aid directly to the people affected in southern Somalia,” said Andrea Heath. “But this distribution assists only a small percentage of those in need. More aid will be required to help the population bridge the gap until the next harvest in December.”
According to Reuters, Somalia's famine refugees, weakened by months of drought, on Monday began Ramadan fast amid the tents and shacks of the world's largest refugee camp.
“Because of the famine, we've been going for days without any food anyway,” said 25-year-old Mohamed Dubow Saman, comforting his daughter outside their emergency shelter in Dadaab camp, just over Somalia's border in neighboring Kenya.
“That was a fast without reward. At least this fast is inspired by God,” he said.
Sick people do not have to keep the fast during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. But most camp-dwellers, caught up in the severest drought to hit the Horn of Africa in decades, appeared determined to keep to their traditions.
As the sun sank below the horizon late on Sunday, bathing Dadaab's makeshift city in a deep orange hue, Saman scanned the sky for the first sight of the crescent moon, which would mark the start of the month-long fast.
Like millions of fellow believers across the world, Saman was prepared to go without food or water from dawn to dusk and wait until night to eat his meager rations.
Ramadan comes at a tough time for the Horn of Africa's Muslim population. In parts of the drought-prone region the rains have failed for four straight years, pastoralists say.
Africa pledging conference
The African Union is also planning to hold a pledging conference for African heads of state and international partners on August 9 in the Ethiopian capital to raise money to support those hit by the drought in the Horn of Africa.
“Around the globe, everyone must dig deep into their pockets to rescue the people of Somalia from the abyss they find themselves staring into,” said AU Commission Deputy Chairperson Erastus Mwencha during a visit to Mogadishu last week.
As night fell over the crowded refugee camp, a young girl led her family out of the scrub, carrying a rug adorned with scriptures from the Koran over her shoulder.
They were the latest among the tens of thousands of refugees arriving at the already over-flowing camp, initially meant to host 270,000 people but now home to more than 400,000, the vast majority Somalis.
Aid workers are struggling to cope with the influx. It is taking the United Nations refugee agency days, sometimes weeks to register and issue new-arrivals with tents.
Weary from the long walk to Kenya, the girl's family will have to mark at least the start of Ramadan sleeping rough in the bush.
Close by, just before the start of the fast, Abdulrahman Malim Abdi mopped up the remains of a meal of wheat flour and water -- scant sustenance for him and his 10 children.
Abdi said his family's two-week food rations were unlikely to last that long, even if they adhered to the strict rules of the fast.
“This is how we enter Ramadan, it will be difficult,” Abdi said, adding that in previous years he would have broken a day's fasting with meat, rice, pasta and dates.
Meanwhile, Saman turned his thoughts to prayer.
“We'll worship here, right by the tents. In our situation, you can't even dream of a mosque,” he said.
Photo: Newly arrived Somali women sit in a queue outside a food distribution centre at the Ifo refugee camp in Dadaab, near the Kenya-Somalia border, August 1, 2011. (Reuters photo)
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