Syria Today | Rice rations for refugees prevented from distribution

Rice rations for refugees prevented from distribution

Syrian authorities prohibited a World Food Programme (WFP) vessel carrying rice rations for Iraqi refugees from unloading at the country’s main port in Lattakia on November 11.

The vessel was prevented from unloading its rice cargo by Syrian authorities because it had failed tests, an unnamed Syrian official told Reuters news agency. “The percentage of cracked rice in the cargo was higher than allowable under Syrian standards. The ship was not ordered to unload,” he said.

Some 200,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria are reliant on food aid, distributed every few months jointly by UN agencies and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. A UN representative confirmed Syrian authorities had prevented rice supplies from being unloaded from a vessel at Lattakia port, but declined to say why. He said the last round of food aid distribution to Iraqi refugees, which finished around November 14, had been impacted by the incident.

“Most of the food ration packages were able to come with rice in the last distribution cycle, but not all of them,” he told Syria Today on November 17.

“We rely mainly on food imports from the international market for feeding the refugees in Syria.”

An unnamed Syrian official said several thousand more tonnes of rice imported by WFP in Lattakia have also been prohibited from distribution because it was “unfit for human consumption”, Reuters reported.