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UN: UN
APPEALS TO KENYA TO ALLOW FOOD INTO SOMALIA:
25/6/2007 (MaximsNews.com,
U.N.)
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UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com@
U.N./
- 25
June 2007 –
The United Nations food relief
agency on Friday appealed
to Kenyan authorities to allow assistance for more than 100,000 people to be
trucked into Somalia, where piracy is hampering deliveries by sea.
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One hundred and
forty WFP-contracted trucks carrying the food left the Kenyan port of
Mombasa and were unexpectedly stopped at the Northeast Kenyan border
crossing of El-Wak since they first started arriving there on 25 May.
“The Kenyan
overland route was chosen because of major problems with sea routes to
Somalia plagued by pirate attacks,” said WFP Somalia Country Director
Peter Goossens.
“Delays in
distributing food this month to 108,000 people in Gedo district risks
further aggravating the alarming rates of malnutrition that are already
reported there,” he warned. The supplies in the trucks are intended to
last for three months.
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“We
are in intense contacts with Kenyan authorities to facilitate the passage of
this cargo into Somalia so that food distributions can urgently resume in
southern Gedo,” he said, recalling that Kenya had allowed the agency to use
El-Wak since January “because it is the most direct route to southern Gedo,
where food assistance is urgently needed.”
Many of
the 140 WFP-contracted trucks had waited so long at El-Wak that they were
unloaded in recent days and the food assistance moved to a local warehouse, the
agency said.
The
Nairobi Government has closed its border with Somalia since January to people
and commercial traffic, but humanitarian assistance was previously allowed
across into the war-ravaged country, where fighting between the Ethiopian-backed
Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and anti-TFG factions caused hundreds of
thousands of people to flee their homes earlier this year.
In the
coming days, a third round of WFP food distributions to people driven from their
homes by fighting in Mogadishu is due to start, with a total of 150,000 people
slated to receive food.
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Labels: United
Nations, U.N.,
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