When Somali mother Eblah Sheikh Aden gathered her seven children and set off walking for Ethiopia to find food, she never imagined she would end up sending some of her brood back into the heart of famine.

But that's just what the 35-year-old did to four of them when she realized they were not going to get fed in time at one of the Horn of Africa's overflowing refugee camps - swelled by a deadly mixture of drought, war and bored donors.

"They were extremely sick, and there wasn't food here," she said in the Kobe Camp in Ethiopia. "I couldn't watch them die and had to make a decision."

It took Eblah two days to walk to the camp but another nine days for her to be registered to stay, such are the numbers of sick and hungry streaming in.

Now that she has managed to register her family, she said she hopes her husband will bring the four children back to the camp soon.

When trucks loaded with food descend on the sprawling Kobe complex they leave both a swirl of dust and a trail of people in their wake, as dozens of refugees jostle for space to grab that day's rations.

This week, as aid workers and police scattered a crowd to maintain order, 68-year-old Hasano Abderahman cast a lonely and confused figure amid the boisterous hungry, scurrying with a worried look on his face past lines of people, tents and shacks trying to find somewhere to bury his baby.

"We had taken Addo to the clinic but he never recovered," said Hasano, who had fled southern Somalia with his wife and his one-month-old son. "I'm now looking for space to bury him," he said, nearly an hour after Addo died from severe malnutrition.

Hasano, Eblah and their families fled a region in Somalia that has been declared a famine zone by the United Nations - a rare call for agencies used to dealing with drought.

As the heat soared with the afternoon sun, 34-year-old Dakat Ibrahim spread out an old rug on the parched earth for a nap, her three boys - all emaciated - lying next to her.

"We are hungry. We've been hungry since all our livestock perished the past two months," she said, after spending the day collecting food and firewood.