Pirates, gun-toting militiamen and endless checkpoints make delivering aid in anarchic Somalia a ?logistical nightmare?, a UN official said, as insecurity hampers efforts to feed 1 million hungry people.

A severe drought has killed dozens of people and hundreds of livestock in the Horn of Africa country after seasonal rains failed for three years in a row, leading to Somalia's worst harvest in a decade.

Lawlessness in the nation carved into fiefdoms run by rival warlords since 1991 is making food distribution extremely difficult, the UN?s World Food Programme (WFP) says.

?You can say that this is a logistical nightmare,? WFP Country Director for Somalia Zlatan Milisic told Reuters in an interview yesterday.

?We have problems on every corner ? pirate attacks, there are shootings on different convoys, there's shootings at the distributions, we get stopped at checkpoints.?

Pirates hijacked two WFP ships last year, forcing the agency back onto Somalia's dangerous roads. There, food convoys are often stopped and sometimes held up for days at roadblocks mounted by militias, brandishing assault rifles and knives.

Inter-clan fighting is also common. One person was killed last week in an exchange of fire as WFP was handing out sacks of food in a village, forcing staff to flee.