United Nations News Centre - Amid ongoing access constraints, UN convoy moves vital food aid into north-west Syria
United Nations News Centre - Amid ongoing access constraints, UN convoy moves vital food aid into north-west Syria:
16 May 2014 – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said today it has started moving more food supplies from Turkey into north-east Syria to assist displaced families, while noting continued challenges with humanitarian access to those in need inside the war-torn nation.
A convoy of 34 trucks carrying 796 metric tons of food including sugar, lentils, rice, bulgur, tomato paste, beans, vegetable oil, pasta, salt, and wheat flour – enough to feed 58,000 people for one month – left Wednesday through the Nusaybin border crossing point.
It will deliver urgently needed food assistance over the next few days to families cut off from supplies in Syria’s Al-Hassakeh governorate, WFP said in a news release.
The convoy is also carrying 10 temporary warehouses to augment WFP food storage capacity in Qamishli, from where food is dispatched and distributed all over the governorate.
In late March, food stocks for 50,000 people were delivered to Qamishli as part of an inter-agency, cross-border convoy carrying various forms of humanitarian aid.
Through WFP’s non-governmental partners, all food rations brought into Syria on the March convoy have been distributed to displaced people in towns and villages across Al-Hassakeh governorate. The rations, originally intended for 50,000 people, have reached more than 90,000, as partners have resorted to splitting rations to cover the needs of a larger number of people.
The agency added that some of the areas already hard hit by the conflict – mainly Aleppo, Idleb and Hama in the north-west of Syria – are also facing a looming drought, with rainfall less than half of the long-term average.
WFP
has started moving more food supplies from Turkey into northeast Syria
through the Nusaybin border crossing point to assist displaced families
cut off from food supplies in Al-Hassakeh governorate. Photo: WFP/Hussam
Al Saleh
