UN food supplies to Iraq surpass one million tons since April

With the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr becoming a key entry point for humanitarian supplies, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said today it had already brought more than one million tons of food into the country since April, enough to feed the entire population for two months.

"This is an unprecedented logistic operation for WFP in terms of size and complexity,” Amer Daoudi, who is in charge of WFP logistics for the emergency operations in Iraq, told a briefing in Baghdad.

“It is in fact the largest food aid operation in history. Three months into this operation, we can now say that we succeeded in making it possible for millions of Iraqis to push away the spectre of hunger that loomed over the country when military hostilities broke out in late March," he added.

From 20 to 30 June alone, six ships with about 90,000 tons of food berthed at Umm Qasr deep-water port in southwestern Iraq. WFP is increasingly using the port to cut down on transportation cost and create more employment for workers in the town as well as for the decimated Iraqi transport industry.

Until the end of October, the agency will continue to support the Iraqi Ministry of Trade in running the vast food rationing system in the conflict-scarred country, where before the war, 60 percent of the 27 million residents relied on the monthly food handouts as their only source of income.