UN launches emergency food airlift to CAR
Iran Press TV
Wed Feb 12, 2014 1:21PM GMT
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has launched an airlift of emergency food supplies to the crisis-hit Central African Republic (CAR).
'This is a rather exceptional operation, our biggest emergency air operation in a long time, bigger that for Syria and the Philippines,' WFP spokesperson Alexis Masciarelli said on Wednesday.
However, he said that the operation, which would provide a month's supply of food for 150,000 people, 'would not definitively solve the problem' in the crisis-hit nation.
The first WFP cargo plane carrying 80 tons of rice arrived in Bangui on Wednesday afternoon. It will be followed by 24 daily rotations for a total of around 1,800 tonnes, according to the WFP.
According to the United Nations, 1.3 million people, nearly a quarter of the population of the country, need immediate food aid.
The impoverished country has been engulfed in a bloody violence since last year.
Amnesty International issued a report on Wednesday, saying a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" is being waged against Muslim civilians in the country, which international peacekeepers unable to prevent.
The rights group also said the attacks against Muslims were committed with the government intending to forcibly displace the Muslims from the country.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in the Central African Republic since last December, when Christian militias launched coordinated attacks against the mostly Muslim Seleka group, which toppled the government in March 2013.
African peacekeeping force MISCA has already deployed some 5,400 of 6,000 planned troops to CAR. Another 1,600 French soldiers are also on the ground in the country.
PG/AB/SL
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