The U.N.‘s World Food Pro­gramme has sus­pended food dis­tri­b­u­tion in the South­ern Philip­pines due to increased bomb­ings there. The food was being given to hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple dis­placed because of the fight­ing in the area. Fight­ing has increased between a rebel Muslin fac­tion and the Philip­pine government.

From this Asso­ci­ated Press arti­cle that we found at Google News, reporter Oliver Teves tells us why the fight­ing has esca­lated, and the WFP’s con­cerns for safety.

The World Food Pro­gram act­ing direc­tor for the Philip­pines, Alghas­sim Wurie, said the deci­sion to sus­pend food dis­tri­b­u­tion was made out of con­cern for the safety of its work­ers.

Most of the 63 WFP staffers work out of offices in Ili­gan and Cota­bato. They have dis­trib­uted 13,000 tons (11,780 met­ric tons) of food sup­plies to 578,000 dis­placed by fight­ing between gov­ern­ment troops and Mus­lim rebels since August 2008.

Fresh clashes erupted last August after the Supreme Court rejected a pro­posed peace deal that would have expanded an autonomous Mus­lim region in the pre­dom­i­nantly Roman Catholic nation. Malaysian-brokered peace talks were put on hold.

The gov­ern­ment esti­mates there still are about 348,000 peo­ple in evac­u­a­tion cen­ters or stay­ing with relatives.

“The U.N. in par­tic­u­lar is very con­cerned about staff safety, so we decided to sus­pend our activ­i­ties dur­ing this week to enable us to under­stand bet­ter the rea­sons behind these prob­lems,” Wurie told The Asso­ci­ated Press.

He said he hoped that by the end of the week the secu­rity sit­u­a­tion will “calm down” and his agency could resume hand­ing out food — mostly rice but also cook­ing oil, beans and high energy biscuits.

The agency also restricted move­ment of its staff, advis­ing them to avoid crowded areas, includ­ing mosques and churches, said Pia Fac­ul­tad, a WFP spokes­woman in Manila.

Like

Unlike