A SHIP carrying 23 200 tonnes of wheat has been diverted to Sudan from a neighboring country amid heightened efforts to avert a new Sudanese famine, the World Food Program (WFP) said on Sunday. The WFP-chartered ship will arrive in Sudan in the next 10 days and its cargo will be distributed quickly to the war-ravaged south and drought-hit west, the UN agency said in a statement. The WFP did not reveal the original destination of the ship. The Sudanese government last week announced that a ship carrying 30_000 tonnes of wheat had arrived in Port Sudan on the Red Sea to ease food shortages in North Darfour, North Kordofan and Bahr el-Ghazal. Last month, the WFP said as many as three million people are threatened by hunger in southern and western Sudan. In a report, the WFP warned that it was running out of food aid supplies and appealed to the international community to provide more than $100m in assistance over the next year. UN officials are asking donors to act swiftly to avoid a repeat of the famine that left around 250_000 people dead in 1985 and the devastating food crisis that hit war-torn Bahr al-Ghazal in 1998. – AFP
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