Famine looms in southern Madagascar, where children are “starving” after drought and sandstorms ruined harvests, the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday.

Amer Daoudi, senior director of WFP operations globally, speaking from Antananarivo, Madagascar, told a U.N. briefing in Geneva after visiting villages where people have resorted to eating locusts and leaves: “They are on the periphery of famine, these are images I haven’t seen for quite some time across the globe.”