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  US food arrives for IS-free town

US food arrives for IS-free town

AFP
Published : Sep 7, 2016, 6:50 am IST
Updated : Sep 7, 2016, 6:50 am IST

The UN said on Tuesday it has delivered food supplies to more than 30,000 residents of Qayyarah for the first time in two years after Iraqi forces expelled jihadists from the northern town.

The UN said on Tuesday it has delivered food supplies to more than 30,000 residents of Qayyarah for the first time in two years after Iraqi forces expelled jihadists from the northern town.

Government forces on August 25 pushed the Islamic State group out of Qayyarah, considered strategic for a planned offensive against the jihadists’ last Iraqi stronghold of Mosul further north.

Qayyarah had been “inaccessible for over two years”, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement.

“The people of Qayyarah... Are suffering extreme hunger with scarce access to food supplies,” said WFP’s country director for Iraq, Sally Haydock.

The WFP stated the food delivered in the past week included dates, beans and canned food as well as rations containing lentils, rice, flour and vegetable oil, enough to last for a month. The town is “in a dire state” with “black smoke” rising from oilfields around it that were set ablaze by the jihadists during fighting, the WFP said.

“All of its shops were destroyed. Food stocks were running low with people surviving only on wheat from the recent harvest,” it said.

The United Nations agency said it had also distributed food to “more than 2,000 displaced people living in camps”.

Located on the Tigris river, Qayyarah was retaken in a three-day operation led by Iraqi special forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes.

Location: Iraq, Baghdad