Food convoy leaves for western Eritrea

Five WFP trucks left Asmara on Thursday morning carrying 77 mt of high-protein biscuits to feed some 39,000 displaced people in western Eritrea. The trucks were heading for Teletabasher, close to the Sudanese border; Dige, near Gash Barka in the southwest; and Goluj, south of Teseney, the agency said. They were expected to take three days to reach their destination. “This is a stop-gap measure until such time we can identify where people are resettling,” after which the agency would concentrate on getting sustainable supplies of maize, flour, sugar and salt to affected populations, WFP spokeswoman Lindsey Davies told IRIN. Davies said there was particular concern about longer-term food supplies in Eritrea. The regions of Dibub and Gash Barka, which normally provided 80 percent of Eritrea’s grain had been hit by two years of drought and were now affected by the war, she said. Last year’s harvest amounted to only 10 percent of normal annual production. Humanitarian agencies are also concerned about the danger of land mines to civilians returning home in the wake of the war. Reporters who went to Barentu with the invading Ethiopian army said the town had been mined.

Meanwhile, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) said on Wednesday it would provide $500,000 in emergency assistance to provide shelter and other supplies to war-displaced people in Eritrea. The supplies - tents, blankets and water jugs - were expected to arrive in Asmara on Friday in a chartered flight from Italy, AFP quoted a USAID statement, released in Washington, as saying.