Agencies say food situation getting worse in the north

A relief agency said on Tuesday that the precarious food supply situation in the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire was getting worse and many cotton farmers there had been unable to sell enough of their crop to buy food. An official from the French aid agency Action Internationale Contre la Faim (ACF) told IRIN that cotton farmers, whose traditional export route via the port of Abidjan had been blocked for eight months by the outbreak of civil war, were running out of cash to buy grain. "The farmers and their families have had to change their eating habits and now only take one meal a day," he said. His remarks followed a UN World Food Programme (WFP) report on Friday which said the food supply situation in northern Cote d'Ivoire was getting worse. WFP said it was encountering difficulties meeting all the demands placed on it so it was targeting only the most vulnerable groups as the demand for food aid increased. The agency said its priority was to assist women in single parent families, sick, disabled persons, nursing mothers and the elderly. The WFP said it had begun registering potential recipients of food aid at three centres in and around the northern town of Korhogo. It is also helping to provide a daily hot meal for more than 17,000 children in the rebel capital Bouake in central Cote d'Ivoire in cooperation with AICF. Cote d'Ivoire, a former French colony, was once the most prosperous country in West Africa, with buoyant cocoa and coffee exports. But it erupted into civil war after a failed coup in September last year. This pitted the government against three rebel groups who hold the northern half of the country.