SANAA, 9 November 2009 (IRIN) - Nearly 100,000 people displaced over five years of fighting between government troops and Houthi-led Shia rebels have been receiving food aid in the governorates of Saada, Hajja, Amran and Al-Jawf since mid-August, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

Since the outbreak of renewed clashes on 12 August, WFP and its implementing partners have provided regular food assistance to 53,956 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Saada Governorate, 25,543 in Hajjah, 5,831 in Amran and 3,346 in al-Jawf, according to Maria Santamarina, a WFP reports and advocacy official in Yemen.

The overall figure includes those assisted by a cross-border operation from Saudi Arabia. "WFP began a cross-border operation from Sanaa to Saudi Arabia and back down into the Mandaba area near the Saudi border where more than 9,450 IDPs trapped by the conflict have received food assistance since 1 November," Santamarina said.

She told IRIN that only 13,447 (less than 14 percent) of the total 98,126 IDPs assisted by WFP were living in camps. "We coordinate with our partner NGOs, local councils and the UN Refugee Agency [UNHCR] to register and verify displaced families in and outside camps."

Yassir Khairi, an emergency officer at UK-based NGO Islamic Relief, one of WFP's implementing partners, said that in October they distributed 4,318 metric tons of food to some 7,303 families living in schools, empty poultry farms, scattered tents, in the open, or with host families.

"All members of these families receiving food assistance in October are new IDPs registered by a joint committee made up of NGOs and local authorities," he told IRIN.

Khairi said each family (with an average of seven members) receives two 50kg sacks of wheat, six cans of beans, 2kg of dates, three litres of vegetable oil, 10kg of sugar and 1kg of salt per month.

Access still problematic

Access to war-afflicted civilians, particularly those inside Saada town, still remains a challenge for aid workers.

"Sometimes, it takes weeks to coordinate safe corridors for passing food aid to the affected families because communication networks in the war-ridden areas are down," said Abdullah Dhahban, a Saada local councillor engaged in the aid distribution effort.

WFP representative in Yemen Giancarlo Cirri said that while the agency had seen some improvements in access "WFP and partners continue to struggle to reach families who have been trapped by the conflict for three months".

He added that WFP is seeing increasing IDP movement towards areas where assistance is being provided. "This suggests that the humanitarian situation of families out of reach of agencies is deteriorating and earlier coping mechanisms of families are exhausted."

Cirri told IRIN that WFP was continuing to use a planning figure of 150,000 IDPs for assistance, but that this could be increased quickly and easily. He also said WFP was short of US$2.7 million for its Saada operations until the end of 2009, and short of US$14.4 million until June 2010.

A recent report by UNHCR estimates the total number of IDPs in northern Yemen to have increased to 175,000 due to ongoing clashes.

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