Hundreds of thousands flee fighting

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) have been asked by the Eritrean authorities to provide emergency assistance for some 200,000 newly displaced persons near the front lines, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York on Thursday. Food items such as ready-to-eat meals and high-protein biscuits as well as medicine, water and shelter materials have been requested. The UN has set up an emergency response unit on the ground comprising UN humanitarian agencies, NGOs and representatives from the Eritrean government, Eckhard said. WFP said from New York it would be part of a planned assessment mission by the UN and the government to areas where people were moving to determine numbers and needs. The government claims 550,000 people from villages and settlement camps, mainly from the Gash Barka region, were moving towards the towns of Haikoita and Agordat, approximately 50-100 km from Barantu. Absence of aid personnel made it difficult to get exact information. WFP said families had fled villages and camps without their belongings, pots and pans, fuel and water. WFP said it would be a major challenge to move food to the interior “given that the population is mobile, and many areas are insecure”. According to a briefing in New York, WFP has no high-energy ready-to-eat food commodities in-country and has contacted other WFP offices in the region for available stocks so as to get them into Eritrea as quickly as possible. A UN official told IRIN: “I don’t think the enormity of the humanitarian crisis in Eritrea has really been recognised yet. It’s early days yet - but it is massive”.