By Libya Herald reporter.
Tunis, 13 October 2017:
Following last week’s fighting in Sabratha, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has been providing food packages to 300 local families who were forced to flee for safety during the clashes. The packages comprise basic foodstuffs – rice, pasta flour, chickpeas, vegetable oil, sugar and tomato paste – for a month.
“With the help of our Libyan partners on the ground, WFP is delivering enough food this week to feed 1,500 people who have been severely affected by fighting,” says WFP Libya Country Director, Richard Ragan.
Although the fighting has now stopped and most people have returned home “many of the normal systems that people depend on to meet their daily needs have ceased to function,” says WFP.
It was estimated that over 15,000 locals had to move elsewhere during the fighting.
In a statement today, WFP says throughout the country this year it aims to assist some 175,000 Libyans “whose food insecurity means they do not know where their next meal is coming from”. Priority is being given “to the most vulnerable families, especially internally displaced people, returnees and refugees, as well as households headed by unemployed women”.
Stressing that the humanitarian situation in Libya is continuing to deteriorate, the WFP says it urgently requires $9.2 million to continue food assistance operations in the country for the next six months.
Meanwhile, it has also been announced that the Libyan Red Crescent in cooperation with the Red Cross has given food to 5,800 residents and displaced people in the eastern towns of Solug and Gemenis, south of Benghazi, to help them meet their daily needs. These places, like other cities in Libya, suffer from difficult economic conditions amid lack of liquidity,
