Fighting in eastern Congo has driven some 200,000 from their homes during the last eight weeks, exacerbating an already dire humanitarian crisis, the World Food Program said Friday.

A total of between 1.4 million and two million people have been displaced since 2007 in the North Kivu province, where fighters loyal to warlord Laurent Nkunda skirmish regularly with militia groups and the army, the United Nations agency said.

Many are malnourished, and some are dying of hunger, said the agency's director in Geneva, Charles Vincent.

"The situation is really deteriorating and has deteriorated for several months, particularly in North Kivu," Vincent said.

An 18,000-strong UN force has failed to halt fighting in the vast region of rural hills and forests. Instead, fighting has intensified since August between government troops and Nkunda's forces.

The World Food Program is short 33,000 tons of food aid needed for the country through March, Vincent said. The agency needs $46 million US in donations to prevent "severe breaks" in the food supply line in the coming weeks, he said.

Already, aid workers face difficulty in delivering relief goods due to insecurity and bad roads, and some of the UN agency's contractors are refusing to go to certain areas, Vincent said.

"Blockages among many of the roads with random taxation by militia groups … have increased in the last couple of months," he said.

Some villages in North Kivu have been deserted entirely, Vincent said. "You cross villages and [there is] not a single person living there."

He also noted that about half of reported rape cases in Congo were committed in North Kivu.

Meanwhile, violence in another eastern province, Ituri, has driven nearly 190,000 people from their homes, the agency said.

Villagers in Ituri have been attacked by fighters from the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group originally from neighbouring Uganda conducting a brutal 21-year insurgency.

"Forced recruitment, women attacked, villages burnt … it's not a good situation at all," Vincent said.