Over 90,000 IDPs now depend on WFP aid

Some 93,000 people displaced by fighting in Liberia now depend on supplies provided by the World Food Programme (WFP), according to the UN agency, which said some 43,000 of the beneficiaries were living in camps near the capital, Monrovia.

WFP's regional office for West Africa said on Wednesday that women and children constituted the majority of recipients and were "in high need of food aid". As a result of the rainy season, dubbed the "hunger gap season", the need for food aid had increased because IDPs had no other means of sustenance. Medical NGOs had registered an increase in moderately malnourished children from 1,500 two months ago to over 3,000 this month, WFP said.

WFP also expressed growing concern over the condition of thousands of people in hard-to-reach areas in Lofa, Gbarpolu and Grand cape Mount counties who fled their home areas in January and February. They were likely to face an "immediate and long-term food shortage" because they fled at a time when they were supposed to planting food crops, the UN agency said.

Fighting between pro- and anti-government forces in the northwestern county of Lofa and neighbouring Gbarpolu spread this year to Grand Cape Mount, which is farther south. All three counties border on Sierra Leone, while Lofa also shares a border with Guinea.