UN begins food distribution for 650,000 people in Niger

The United Nations today said it was beginning free food handouts to hundreds of thousands of hungry people in Niger, a deeply-impoverished West African nation still reeling from its worst food shortage in years.

Poor rains and locusts ruined crops two years ago and Niger’s people suffered through a massive food crisis in 2005. Crop yields picked up last year, but food stores are again dwindling ahead of this year’s harvest and the World Food Programme said it would begin distributing cereals today to 650,000 people in Niger.