WFP gets food to IDPs from Caxito

WFP has distributed 15 days’ worth of emergency rations to about 3,000 people who fled Caxito in Bengo province after a UNITA attack on 5 May. The Cacuaco municipal authority, just outside the capital Luanda, resettled about 2,500 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Caxito on four hectares of land in Bairro Caop Velho, Funda, WFP said in its latest situation report. In addition, 514 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) refugees who had been living in Boa Esperanca in Caxito, and who were already receiving WFP aid, had been resettled at Sonefe in the same municipality.

The emergency distributions followed a recent multi-agency visit to the area to assess IDPs’ needs. “Some of their recommendations were for immediate emergency rations for 15 days and for regular visits to be made to the area by food aid monitors in Luanda,” WFP said. It also noted that the number of malnourished children in two Medecins Sans Frontieres therapeutic feeding centres (TFCs) in Kuito had reached 600. “Numbers in both the SFCs (supplementary feeding centres) and TFCs are increasing every week due to the arrival of children and their families from Camacupa.”

WFP has not been able to access Camacupa, but said it had delivered more than 545,000 mt of food commodities to 43,726 people in nearby Kuito from 9-16 May. Some 2,300 of the beneficiaries were children in TFCs, about 37,000 were new IDPs and 4,250 were assisted in community kitchens.