To help avert a major humanitarian disaster,
United Nations agencies providing food, refugee protection and assistance
to children have accelerated their relief efforts in war-torn and drought-stricken
Eritrea and Ethiopia.
In Eritrea, the World Food Programme
(WFP) launched today an urgent airlift of high protein biscuits to tens
of thousands of people displaced by the fighting. Two WFP-chartered aircraft
carrying 14 tonnes of food left this morning for Asmara from Lokichokio,
the agency's airbase in northern Kenya.
In a statement released today, the food agency said that an additional WFP flight from Entebbe, Uganda, also departed this morning for Asmara, delivering approximately 40 tonnes of high protein biscuits. By tomorrow, the agency expected to bring the total deliveries over two days to 82 tonnes - enough to feed approximately 60,000 people for the next four days.
It was also planning to purchase and deliver as quickly as possible an additional 600 tonnes of biscuits - a one-week supply of food for 260,000 displaced Eritreans.
"While these 600 metric tonnes are an important first step, we urgently need even larger amounts," said Kofi Owusu-Tieku, WFP Emergency Coordinator in Asmara. "We appeal to all donor countries to assist us as quickly as possible, as with each day that goes by, the situation of hundreds of thousands of Eritreans - many of whom fled with virtually no supplies - becomes even more precarious."
Joining the effort, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) today dispatched three Eritrea-bound cargo planes carrying relief supplies to Asmara. The shipment included 40 tonnes of medicine, medical equipment, water purification tablets, skimmed milk and water containers.
Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported having registered 11,500 Eritrean refugees in four transit centres in Sudan, but estimated that up to 20,000 more people had arrived over the past few days. Tens of thousands more may be on their way after the fall on Sunday of the border town of Omhajer, UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said today in Geneva.
The number of people displaced inside Eritrea was not clear, he said. The Eritrean authorities spoke of 550,000, but the figure presumably included some 300,000 people displaced by a recent drought as well as people displaced in earlier bouts of fighting.
In Sudan, Eritrean refugees - mostly women, children and elderly people - have been accommodated in four transit centres near the border, Mr. Janowski said. UNHCR has distributed 400 tents and plastic tarpaulins to give the refugees some protection from scorching heat and dust. Another 2,000 more tents were on their way from Khartoum to the border area, UNHCR said.