KHARTOUM (AFP) — Gunmen have killed a second driver delivering food aid for the UN's World Food Programme in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region, where banditry has forced vital rations to be halved.
Father of six Mohammed Makki el-Rasheed, 58, was shot dead on Monday on a main road between North and South Darfur despite travelling in a police-escorted convoy, the WFP said in a statement on Thursday.
It said last week it would cut the rations it supplies to the needy in Darfur by about half because of bandits.
The cuts are to be applied from May "because banditry against WFP-contracted trucks is preventing sufficient stocks of vital food relief from getting through," the WFP statement said.
So far in 2008, 60 WFP-contracted trucks have been hijacked in Darfur. Of these 39 are still missing and 26 drivers are unaccounted for. Another WFP driver was killed in Darfur last month.
The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that since the start of the year, 113 humanitarian vehicles have been hijacked in Darfur and seven humanitarian staff killed, including the two WFP drivers.
The WFP repeated its appeal for rebel groups to ensure safety along the roads where they operate, so humanitarian food relief can get to those who need it, and for the government to increase the number of police escorts.
The WFP supplied rations to 2.4 million people in Darfur in March.
A bolstered United Nations-African Union mission is currently deploying in Darfur and will eventually number 26,000 to patrol a region roughly the size of France.
The mission is tasked with ending almost five years of bloodshed in which the UN says up to 300,000 people have died from the effects of war, famine and disease in Darfur, while 2.2 million others have been left homeless.
Khartoum says fewer than than 10,000 people have died.
The conflict began when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power in one of the most remote and deprived places on earth.
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