A UN statement said the number of people in southern Sudan in need of food quadrupled during the past year, local Al-Ahdath daily reported Wednesday.

"The conflicts and drought have increased the number of southerners in need of food aid from 1 million in 2009 to 4.3 million at the beginning of 2010," the paper quoted a statement released by the UN World Food Program (WFP) on Tuesday as saying.

Conflicts in 2009 killed 2,500 people and displaced 350,000 people from their homes in southern Sudan, according to the statement.

Samson Kwajie, minister of Agriculture and Forestry in the government of southern Sudan, said "Internal conflict, incursion from the Lord's Resistance Army (a Ugandan rebel group) and drought have made almost half the population of the south short of food," the report said.

Moreover, WFP coordinator in southern Sudan Leo van der Velden said at the beginning of the rainy season, the access to the needy was impossible as roads were closed, according to the paper.

The WFP noted that its program, which aimed to reach millions of people across Sudan, was facing a shortfall of half-a-billion U. S. dollars, the report added.