The Secretary-General of the United Nations , Antonio Guterres, began Tuesday in Mogadishu a brief visit to Somalia , a country suffering as a result of a long conflict and natural disasters.

Pictures published on social media showed Somali Foreign Minister Absher Omar Harusi receiving Guterres at Mogadishu airport.

The Somali authorities strengthened security in Mogadishu on the occasion of the unannounced visit, with most roads cut off and public transport restricted.

Guterres, who visited Somalia in March 2017, will hold talks with political leaders and visit a camp for the displaced, according to local press reports.

Guterres is visiting him at a time when the country is suffering from a catastrophic drought that has brought many to the brink of famine, while the government is dealing with a bloody Islamist insurgency.

The United Nations launched an appeal to collect $ 2.6 billion to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of this country located in the Horn of Africa, but it has not collected so far only 13% of the necessary funds.

Five consecutive disastrous rainy seasons in some parts of Somalia as well as in Kenya and Ethiopia led to the worst drought in the region in four decades, destroying livestock and crops and forcing at least 1.7 million people to leave their homes in search of food and water.

The United Nations estimates that about half of the population will need humanitarian assistance this year, as the drought affected 8.3 million people.

"The crisis is not over yet, the needs are still great and urgent," said the UN coordinator for Somalia, Adam Abdulla, last week in Geneva, warning that "some of the most affected areas still face the risk of famine."

He mentioned that floods resulting from seasonal rains in March killed 21 people and displaced more than 100,000, indicating that the rains may not be sufficient to improve the food security situation in the future.

Somalia witnessed a famine in 2011 that killed 260,000 people, more than half of whom were children under the age of six. The United Nations held its responsibility in part to the international community for not moving at the required speed.

A study published in March by the Somali Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization and the UN agency UNICEF warned that the consequences of drought in Somalia could kill between 18,100 and 34,200 people during the first six months of the year.

Somalia, one of the world's poorest countries, suffers from decades of civil war, political violence and a bloody insurgency waged by the al-Shabaab movement, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda.

President Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud, who returned to power in May 2022, threatened the Islamists last year with "total war" and sent troops in September to support an uprising by local clan militias in the center of the country against Islamist fighters.

In recent months, the Somali army and clan militias have recaptured several areas from Al-Shabaab in the operation, which was carried out with air support from US forces and the support of the African Union force in Somalia.

At the end of March, the government announced that more than 3,000 al-Shabaab militants had been killed since the start of the attack, and the Ministry of Information reported that 70 cities and villages had been “liberated” from Islamists who have waged a rebellion since 2007 against the federal government supported by the international community.

It was not possible to verify this information from independent sources.

Al-Shabaab often responds by launching bloody attacks that show their ability to launch strikes inside cities and on Somali military installations and civilian, political and military targets, despite the advance of government forces.

Guterres stated in a report to the UN Security Council in February that the year 2022 recorded the largest number of civilian casualties since 2017, especially as a result of the increase in Al-Shabaab attacks.