UN agency sends food to Iraqis through Syria

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has sent 54 trucks carrying wheat flour into Iraq through Syria, opening its fourth…

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has sent 54 trucks carrying wheat flour into Iraq through Syria, opening its fourth aid channel into the war-battered country.

"This is the first aid convoy from Syria since the war broke out in Iraq last month," the WFP representative in Syria, Mr Mohamed el-Kouhene, said in a statement.

He said Syria, Iraq's western neighbour, has granted a number of facilities to export locally produced foods. The WFP has previously opened corridors for aid through Turkey, Jordan and Iran.

The WFP said although it had not received any reports of extreme food shortages in Iraq, it "expects the most vulnerable Iraqis to exhaust their reserves by early May".

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About 60 per cent of Iraq's 26 million people have been dependent on monthly food handouts distributed under the oil-for-food programme, which allowed Iraq under UN-imposed sanctions to sell oil to buy food and medicine.

The total amount of wheat flour dispatched from Syria was 2,700 tonnes.

Eleven of the trucks arrived in the northern city of Mosul, the WFP said. It did not say where the others were bound for.