WFP offers food aid to 1 mln across Iraq since June

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said Friday that despite a very volatile security situation, it has provided food assistance to more than one million people displaced across Iraq since an upsurge in violence in mid-June last year.

“More than 1.8 million people have been displaced throughout the country, many without access to food, water or other basic essentials,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

“WFP aid currently reaches up to 1.4 million uprooted Iraqis a month, but it aims to scale up its food assistance to reach 1.8 million people by March of this year,” Dujarric said.

“In areas where markets are functioning well, mainly in northern Iraq, WFP is using food vouchers to help uprooted families in areas,” he said.

In Iraq, more than 5.2 million Iraqis need urgent humanitarian assistance and over 2.1 million are internally displaced, according to official estimates. Some 740,000 Iraqis are sheltered in sub-standard housing as a severe winter sweeps the region. A further 2.2 million living in areas controlled by the Islamic State (IS) also urgently need aid./End/