MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- More than 50 people have died in a cholera outbreak in the past week, health officials said Monday.

The disease has hit Beletwein, 185 miles north of Mogadishu, the capital, and Jilib, 217 miles to the south. Officials said dozens more are infected with the disease in both towns and surrounding villages.

Dr. Mohamed Hussein Halaneh, a health official in Beletwein, said residents were contracting the disease after drinking from stagnant pools in the bed of the Shabelle River, which stopped flowing because of dry weather.

"There is no source of water other than the river,'' Halaneh told The Associated Press by radio.

Cholera, an acute bacterial infection of the small intestine that causes severe diarrhea and dehydration, has been endemic in Somalia for the past decade. Outbreaks of the disease often occur in southern Somalia during the two annual dry seasons when water becomes scarce.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, and much of the country's infrastructure has been destroyed by a decade of banditry and clan-based fighting.

The country has no state water system and few health facilities.

"One cannot tell the people not to drink the dirty water when you have no other alternative,'' said Abdiweli Sheikh Mohamud, head of the Somali Red Crescent Society in Jilib.