Dhenge Wario, a district administrator in the zone in Oromia region close to the country’s border with neighbouring Kenya, said among those dead were a two-month-old baby and elderly people.

“People are not eating food for many days. Their cattle are all dead,” he told the BBC.

Guyo Turu, a resident of the district which is mostly populated by pastoralist communities, said his 16-year-old son had died.

“He got sick because of hunger; we had nothing. When we took him to the hospital they told us [his illness] was related to shortage of food. He died shortly after that,” he said.

Mr Guyo told the BBC that his family had lost all their cattle.

Another resident said he had lost all but four of his 150 cattle.

More than 800,000 people require emergency food assistance because of the drought, according to the disaster prevention and food security office in Borena zone.

“The number of people seeking aid is increasing” the head of the office told the BBC.

Food aid is being provided by the government and non-governmental organisations but the needs are far higher than what’s been delivered, he added.

A branch of the office in the area however said it had no information about the people dying from food scarcity.

The Horn of Africa region is suffering from what the UN has called “the most severe drought in two generations” after five consecutive failed rainy seasons.

The UN’s migration agency IOM had previously said that more than 4.5 million cattle had died since 2021 because of the drought in Ethiopia.