First WFP food convoy leaves for Iraq

The first food aid convoy from the World Food Programme [WFP] in Iran is on the way to northern Iraq to meet the needs of people who only have between four and six weeks' worth of food left. "There is a great need for this food to be sent in urgently," the agency's spokesperson in Iran, Ramin Rafirasme, told IRIN from the capital, Tehran, on Thursday. Some 200 mt of food aid is making its way from the western Iranian border province of Kermanshah into northern Iraq. "This is a small amount of aid, as the landscape is very hilly and difficult to drive through," he said. The trucks left Kermanshah on Tuesday, loaded with vegetable oil and wheat flour, but were only able to move slowly across the hilly terrain. With the country acting as an important humanitarian corridor, the food agency pre-positioned 2,800 mt of emergency food rations in Kermanshah, 550 km southwest of Tehran, while a further 10,000 mt of wheat flour was being procured locally. "Under the plan to reactivate the monthly food-rationing system in Iraq as early as May, WFP needs to bring in about half a million tonnes of food every month into Iraq for the next three months," Rafirasme explained. However, funding in response to WFP's appeal of US $1.3 billion Iraq appeal has fallen short, with only $310 million pledged to date, so WFP is reiterating the need for donors to support it. Efforts to provide aid within northern Iraq continued throughout the war. Following the withdrawal of international staff on 17 March, national staff were able to distribute nearly 6,000 mt of food in the three Kurdish-controlled northern provinces. WFP staff in those provinces say more families are now returning to their homes from rural areas, with life gradually returning to normal. During the war, WFP property and warehouses were left untouched. With plans to deliver as much as 1.6 million mt of food aid to the entire Iraqi population over the next six months, WFP is keen to restart distributions in southern and central Iraq before the end of April. Meanwhile, agency staff are preparing looted warehouses in the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Tikrit for the arrival of new food supplies.