400,000 people have been out of Libya: UN
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Xinhua, April 2, 2011
The amount of people that fled the violence in Libya to date numbers 400,000, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said Friday.
Some 83,000 third-country nationals have been repatriated, but more than 12,000 people remain at border transit points and are in need of evacuation, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The World Food Program (WFP) has delivered food to six different locations in eastern Libya and is providing logistics and telecommunications support to humanitarian workers in Libya and neighboring countries.
So far, WFP, in cooperation with the Libyan Red Crescent, has reached more than 7,000 uprooted people displaced from Ajdabiya, and 20,000 others in the area will begin receiving food assistance in the coming days.
The WFP is working with the Red Crescent to provide food to 85, 000 of the most vulnerable people in Benghazi,a rebel stronghold in east Libya, and surrounding areas over the next two weeks.
Libya is a food deficit country heavily reliant on imports, according to the Rome-based agency. To feed a population of over 6. 6 million, an estimated 110,000 tons of food monthly are required, of which at least 75 percent is imported.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR warns that that thousands of people could be trapped in areas rocked by clashes and it hopes that it will be able to gain full access to people in eastern Libya in the coming days.
