Several people died "because of hunger" in one of Uganda's poorest and most lawless regions, the prime minister's office said Thursday, with local officials saying hundreds had perished.

The Ugandan prime minister's office on Thursday did not provide exact figures for the number of deaths in the Karamoja region.

More than half a million people are going hungry in Karamoja, some 40% of the population of this neglected, long-suffering rural region between South Sudan and Kenya.

The region has experienced harsh drought and last year witnessed damaging floods and landslides.

There have also been plagues of locusts and armyworms, and raids by heavily armed cattle thieves that have left little to eat.

"As the government, we acknowledge the famine situation in Karamoja where we have reports of deaths due to starvation," a spokesperson for the prime minister told Agence France-Presse (AFP) a day after a meeting with the region's politicians.

The Prime Ministry announced it would send 200 metric tons of aid and mobilize $36 million to buy food for the region for the next three months.

"The situation in Karamoja is worse than envisaged with hundreds so far dead and many waiting to die due to starvation," a local lawmaker, Faith Nakut, said, who attended the meeting with the prime minister on Wednesday.

Nakut told AFP that 46 people had died in the Napak district by July 8, while 189 died in the Kaabong district. There were further deaths in two other districts, she said, but could not provide exact figures.

"Thousands of children and the elderly are at high risk of death as a result of starvation," she warned.