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Africa: Horn | |
BBC: Libya to open Darfur aid corridor | |
2004-07-16 | |
via BBC By David Willey - Friday, 16 July, 2004, 01:08 GMT 02:08 UK Libya has agreed to open a new aid corridor across the Sahara Desert to speed up the delivery of relief supplies to the Darfur region of Sudan. Under the agreement with the World Food Programme, the first road convoy will make the 3,000km-journey next month. The first shipment of wheat flour, from Switzerland, is expected to arrive in the Libyan port of Benghazi in early August. From there it will be taken to the border area between Chad and Sudan. More than 100,000 refugees from Sudan have sought safety in neighbouring Chad, and many are camped along a 600km stretch of the border.
After signing the agreement in the Libyan capital Tripoli, John Powell, a senior official of the World Food Programme, said that the new land corridor across the desert would enable the WFP to dramatically increase the amount of food aid it was sending to the area. Until now, the Rome-based agency had to truck aid from Port Sudan along roads which were often Although time is of the essence, everything good in this crisis happens in slow motion. | |
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