The United Nations will send two additional convoys of emergency supplies
to southern Lebanon to help alleviate an increasing humanitarian crisis, a UN
spokesman said yesterday.
"Those convoys, which are being organized by the World Food Program (WFP),
are to go to the towns of Jezzine and Sidon, and we also hope to go deeper into
the south in the following days," Marie Okabe, spokesperson for
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, told reporters at the UN headquarters.
The new supplies come after a successful aid delivery to the devastated port
city of Tyre on Wednesday, said the spokesperson.
With more than one fifth of Lebanon's 3.8 million population believed to have
abandoned their homes to escape the conflict, WFP said in a news release that it
plans to increase the number of people targeted by its contribution to the
emergency operation.
Almost 360 Lebanese have been killed in the conflict so far with an estimated
1,500 injured, the great majority civilians, the UN's Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its latest situation report,
highlighting that 42 Israelis have also died in nearly two weeks of fighting.
"The conflict continues to cause enormous damage to residential areas and key
civilian infrastructure with hundreds of bridges androad networks, mainly in the
south (of Lebanon), systematically destroyed, leaving entire communities in the
south inaccessible and hampering relief operations," OCHA said.
Out of an estimated 800,000 people affected by the violence, around 700,000
have fled their homes, with 125,000 or so staying in schools and public
institutions in Lebanon and 150,000 estimated to have crossed the border into
Syria, it added.