WFP News Release
2 April 2013
GROWING VIOLENCE IS BLOCKING URGENTLY-NEEDED FOOD AID FOR PEOPLE IN SYRIA: WFP
DAMASCUS –
The growing cycle of violence in Syria is preventing life-saving food
aid
from reaching many of the millions of vulnerable Syrians in need, says
the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), calling on all parties
to allow humanitarian aid to pass safely into disputed and conflict
zones.
WFP
reached close to two million people in March with food assistance in
Syria’s 14 governorates but continues to face enormous challenges
reaching certain areas of Rural Damascus, Quneitra, Dara’a,
Deir Ezzor, Al-Raqqa, and many parts of the north of the country,
particularly Aleppo and Idlib.
“It
has become a struggle now to move food from one area to the other with
our warehouses and trucks getting increasingly caught in the crossfire,”
said Muhannad Hadi, WFP’s Regional Emergency Coordinator
for the Syria crisis. “We are sometime left with the difficult
decision of calling off the dispatch of food to a place where we know
there is dire need for it.”
The
situation is particularly critical in conflict zones and some
opposition-held areas where WFP has limited access and where millions of
people are believed to be in acute need of food.
WFP
sub-contracted trucks are often stopped at checkpoints and in many
instances are forced to turn back, or sometimes hijacked. In March,
three trucks, loaded with food for 17,000 people in Al Hassakeh,
were detained by an armed group in rural Deir Ezzor. The drivers and
the trucks were released but the food has not yet been recovered.
Recently,
a mortar fell on a WFP warehouse in Adraa, on the outskirts of
Damascus. WFP staff were unable to recover the food because of continued
shelling and insecurity on the ground. Since the beginning
of the operation in December 2011, WFP has recorded over 20 attacks on
its food trucks, warehouses and cars.
Hadi
said that WFP will still attempt to send food to 2.5 million people
across the country in April and appealed to all parties to respect and
observe humanitarian principles and to guarantee the safe
passage of staff, aid trucks and our humanitarian partners’ personnel.
To
meet the urgent food needs of a population on the move and the increase
in the number of displaced people in Syria, WFP and its partners
maintain a flexible distribution scheme. Over the last two
weeks, after violence returned to the Baba Amr area of Homs, thousands
of people fled to neighbouring districts. WFP re-directed the food
allocation earmarked for Baba Amr to the neighbourhoods where residents
had sought refuge, in public shelters or with
host families in different areas of the governorate.
WFP
reached 1.7 million people inside Syria in its February distribution
cycle; about 500,000 of them were in opposition-held areas. WFP needs
US$19 million every week to support its Syria response,
which is aiming to feed 2.5 million people inside Syria and close to
one million refugees in neighbouring countries.
# #
WFP
is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide.
Each year, WFP feeds more than 90 million people in more than 70
countries.
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