BERLIN - The United Nations has released $100 million to support 10 underfunded humanitarian crises in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East, the UN said on Friday.

More than a third of this funding will go to aid operations in Yemen ($20 million) and Ethiopia ($15 million), where people are grappling with hunger, displacement, diseases and climate disasters, a spokesperson said during a regular briefing.

Other countries that will benefit from the funding include Myanmar ($12 million), Mali ($11 million), Burkina Faso ($10 million), Haiti ($9 million), Cameroon ($7 million) and Mozambique ($7 million), as well as El Nino-affected Burundi ($5 million) and Malawi ($4 million).

"We urgently need increased and sustained donor attention to these underfunded crises," said UN humanitarian agency OCHA official Joyce Msuya.

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In Burkina Faso, an al Qaeda-linked group said it killed nearly 300 people in Saturday's devastating attack in the north-central part of the country, but said it targeted militia members linked to the army, not civilians, the US consultancy Site Intelligence Group reported.

The attack outside the town of Barsalogho was one of the deadliest in nearly a decade of Islamist violence in the West African country. A group of victims' relatives said at least 400 were killed when jihadists opened fire on civilians digging defensive trenches.

Al Qaeda affiliate Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin said soldiers and militia members were excavating the trenches when it attacked.

"Those who were eliminated in this attack are nothing but militias affiliated with the Burkinabe army ... not as they lied and said that they were civilians," JNIM said in a communique translated by Site on Thursday.

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Several videos apparently filmed by the militants and released on social media showed dozens of bodies in trenches, most of them in civilian clothing.