One-in-five Lebanese left homeless

ONE-in-five Lebanese has been made homeless by the ongoing violence between Hezbollah and Israel, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said yesterday.

Food shortages and the shelling of residential areas has turned the conflict into a major humanitarian situation.

An estimated 800,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon — 95,000 in and around the capital Beirut.

Yesterday, WFP sent emergency relief convoys to the cities of Sidon and Jezzine in the south of the country.

Eight convoy trucks loaded with 90 tonnes of wheat flour, 15 tonnes of canned meat, blankets and shelter materials provided by Medicins Sans Frontier (MSF) were bound for Jezzine.

Ten trucks laden with 18 tonnes of food and shelter supplies were also heading towards Sidon.

Amer Daoudi, WFP’s emergency coordinator in Lebanon, said: “There are women and children who face a daily threat, not only of shelling and injury, but of having less and less food and water to sustain them.

“We have no time to waste in reaching them. A greater catastrophe is in the making if we don’t assist people soon.”

WFP, which is carrying supplies on behalf of UNDP, UNHCR, UNICEF and WHO, is set to send more convoys into the area over the next few days.

Mr Daoudi said WFP staff who travelled to the bombed city of Tyre, southern Lebanon, saw deserted village after deserted village and refugees fleeing the area in bumper to bumper traffic.

WFP, which has called for €38 million to help fund the logistics and supplies for the humanitarian operation, is also sending in aid via air, flown in from Italy.

Twenty temporary warehouses and five generators will be flown into Latakkia, in Syria and then transported into Lebanon by UN convoy trucks.