For weeks, tattered groups of malnourished people, mostly women and children, have been straggling into Kismayu from the ravaged lands to the north. About 6,000 displaced people now live in makeshift camps around the city.

Another 3,000 hungry people have fled from the Juba valley toward the Kenyan border, where the Kenyan authorities have refused to let them enter. They are camped in a no man's land between the border and the Somali town of Dhoobley, officials said. At least seven people have died of starvation in that camp.

United Nations officials say clan fighting in the region has hampered relief efforts and has made it too dangerous for their workers to investigate how bad the food shortage is or how many people have died. But they said that if the grain crop usually harvested in July and August fails, a full-scale famine will settle on the valley.

"There is a lack of food in the Juba valley, but not yet at the level that we can call starvation," said Gerard Van Dijk, the Somalia director for the United Nations' World Food Program. "The situation is bad. It is not yet a disaster. But there will be a disaster if there is a lack of harvest."

Somalia has been without a central government since 1991, when rebels overthrew the President, Mohammed Said Barre. Soon after the coup, rival clan leaders struggling for power turned their guns on each other. In the chaotic war that followed more than 30,000 Somalis were killed in battles and another 300,000 people died of famine brought on largely by the fighting.

In 1992 the United Nations sent in peacekeeping troops, led by the United States, and large shipments of food. Though the mission managed to slow the famine, it failed to make peace between the warring clans. Since the United Nations troops withdrew in March 1995, the country has splintered into several parts, each governed by a different clan warlord. These clans have been in an almost perpetual state of war as their military leaders try to expand their territories.

The current food shortages appear to be concentrated along the Juba River between the towns of Bu A-Ale and Gobuen, a region that has been plagued not only by a lack of rain over the last two years, but more recently by floodwaters flowing out of Ethiopia, where there has been too much rain.

Last week the United Nations distributed about 58 tons of emergency food to 2,200 families in villages around the town of Marerey, but fighting has made it hard to do much more, officials said. Mr. Dijk said that another 60 tons was to be trucked overland this week from Kenya to the town of Bu A-Ale.

People who have fled the region said hunger was once again killing people in the fertile breadbasket of central Somalia, where hundreds of thousands of people died during the famine in 1992.

Mana Ibrahim, 22, from Kobon village, near the town of Jumama, said her fields are dried up and her husband was robbed and killed while fishing in the river about a month ago.

Her oldest child, who was 4, died of starvation two weeks later, she said. Her other child, a tiny bony boy less than a year old with listless eyes, has survived only on breast milk. She herself had to be brought to Kismayu in a wheelbarrow by a relative a few days ago because she was too weak to walk.

"Because of hunger," she said. "Taciated baby in her arms began to cry. "I'm worrying still that he will die of hunger," she said. "For the whole day he has had nothing to eat."

Narinda Sharma, the Unicef representative in Kismayu, said two years of drought in the river valley have devastated the crops, creating shortfalls of staples like sorghum and grain.

Then, in May, heavy rains in Ethiopia caused flooding that affected Somalia as well. Not only has the Juba overflowed its banks, but the nearby Shabeli River is also flooded. Where there was too little water and parched land, there is now too much, United Nations officials say.

"This whole area is liable to be under water for some considerable time," said William Condie, a Unicef official. "It makes resupply difficult." To make matters worse, there have been continuous battles in the region between forces loyal to Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, the Habr-Gedir faction leader who controls south Mogadishu, and forces loyal to Mohammed Said Hirsi, known as General Morgan, a Darod-clan faction leader who controls Kismayu.

Much of the fighting has taken place around the region between towns of Jilib and Yontoy near the river. The troubles started in March 1995, when General Aidid's forces pushed west out of Mogadishu and took over the town of Baidoa, which lies in the fertile valley between the Juba and Shabeli Rivers. Since then, General Aidid's fighters have forayed south along the river into the lower Juba valley, sowing insecurity around Jilib and threatening Mr. Hirsi's control of Kismayu.

The insecurity has made it difficult for people in the river valley to cultivate their land. It has also made it nearly impossible for aid workers to deliver food, medicine, farm tools and seeds to some areas, United Nations officials said.

Mr. Hirsi acknowledged in an interview that there had been fighting around Jilib, but he was quick to say it was "caused by Aidid's so-called government." He also rejected the idea the battles were to blame for the shortages of food.

"The situation in Juba is very, very bad," Mr. Hirsi said. "There is a lot of starvation and the reason is not the fighting. The reason is the drought."

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