Aid staff evacuated

WFP evacuated aid staff from Mapel, southern Bahr el-Ghazal, on Wednesday afternoon, after another bombing raid in southern Sudan. Mapel was bombed again on Wednesday morning by low flying aircraft which dropped nine bombs near a relief facility, WFP said. In a statement released from Rome on Wednesday, WFP Executive Director Catherine Bertini strongly condemned the continued bombings. “These violent attacks are totally unacceptable and we strongly condemn them. They show there is no respect for aid workers trying to help innocent Sudanese.” Bertini said that there was no other choice than to evacuate staff from Mapel, where relief facilities had been targeted twice this week. “It’s obvious the attackers don’t care whether the hungry starve to death or not. If they did, they would not be out to stop our relief work”, she said.

The evacuation of 11 WFP aid workers from Mapel followed a statement made on Tuesday on behalf of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announcing a temporary suspension of relief flights, pending a security investigation. A UN source told IRIN that the suspension of flights and evacuation of relief workers were necessary because of a pattern of bombing in the south, and was not the result of isolated incidents.