UN agency to continue quake-zone food drops
A vital injection of new funds will sustain United Nations food drops to victims of south Asia’s earthquake for at least two more months in one of the biggest-ever helicopter airlifts of aid, UN officials said today.
The UN World Food Program has received $14m (€12m) in new donations and three British military Chinook choppers will this week help in food distribution, along with dozens already in the air from the Pakistani army and other countries.
“We’re much more upbeat now than a few weeks ago when there was a sort of creeping anxiety,” said WFP spokesman David Orr.
UN officials in Pakistan said in late October that they might have to ground UN helicopter relief flights for lack of funding, even as the world body warned of a second wave of deaths among victims of the October 8 quake that killed at least 86,000 people.
