The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said today one of its warehouses in Damascus, Syria was struck by mortar fire. The warehouse holds 1300 metric tons of food, enough to feed 500,000 Syrians for a month. WFP cannot access the warehouse to determine the losses and what can be retrieved. An unexploded device still remains in the facility.
WFP said today that despite the conflict, it "has significantly scaled up its assistance to provide enough food for almost 1,700,000 million vulnerable Syrians in all parts of the country." The plan is to increase aid to reach 2.5 million Syrians by the end of April. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent is WFP's major partner on the ground distributing food.
WFP is currently short on funding by US $ 79 million placing their food pipeline in jeopardy. The UN food agency relies entirely on voluntary donations. The US Food for Peace program is the largest single donor to WFP, although Congress is threatening to reduce funding for this program.
Syrians continue to flee their homeland to take refuge in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt. During February, WFP fed almost 200,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan alone. That total was double the amount fed in December of 2012. In Iraq there are 800 new arrivals a day from Syria.
WFP's Abeer Etefa, after spending a week in Syria, prepared a video titled "This is what it's like to be displaced in Syria."
WFP has set up a Syria relief fund to collect donations.
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