We cannot organise relief beyond Umm Qasr, insist aid agencies

The security situation in Iraq remains too dangerous for aid agencies to move beyond the port city of Umm Qasr and fan out deeper into the country, aid co-ordinators said yesterday.

"We are not trained, equipped, or organised to move in a combat environment," said Michael Marx, head of the US Government's relief team for Iraq.

Fighting is raging further north in the city of Basra and beyond, and two Kuwait Red Crescent aid shipments to the border town of Safwan last week were mobbed by people tearing food boxes off trucks.

A British relief ship, RFA Sir Galahad, docked at Umm Qasr on Friday with food, medicine and other supplies, but apart from short-term relief that is distributed by soldiers on the move, little is reaching Iraqis. Coalition forces are hoping to pacify battle areas quickly so that agencies can come in behind them and distribute aid through the suspended U.N. oil-for-food programme.

Maj-Gen Albert Whitley, the British officer trying to co- ordinate military efforts with humanitarian relief operations, said the biggest problem throughout Iraq was dangerous water quality.

Water treatment has degraded over the past 15 years and virtually no sewage plant in the country works, Maj-Gen Whitley said. Nor are there chemicals to purify water.

"That means that the Tigris in particular is a floating sewer," Maj-Gen Whitley said. "That provides most of the water to the water treatment plants in Basra. It's no good digging a well, because you get the same stuff."

Cholera, typhoid and hepatitis are a real threat, especially in Baghdad, Maj-Gen Whitley said. A pipeline laid from Kuwait to Umm Qasr will open today, bringing 600,000 gallons a day of water that can be trucked into other areas by military vehicles, he said.

The Iraqi government claimed before the war started that people had a six-month supply. But the World Food Programme has estimated that the true figure is about one to two months.

Iraq needs about 200,000 tons of food a month, and about 140,000 of that would pass through Umm Qasr, Maj-Gen Whitley said. The U.S. government has earmarked 600,000 tons worth US$300m.

Maj-Gen Whitley said the country was not facing a humanitarian disaster, but that a crisis "could be precipitated tomorrow" if, for example, pro-Saddam death squads forced people to flee the cities.

¿ The United Nations said yesterday that it had sent its first shipment of aid across the Turkish border into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq since the start of the US-led war against Baghdad.

Two trucks carrying water purification equipment, medicine and educational material for the UN children's relief agency Unicef passed through the Habur border gate in south-eastern Turkey.

UN officials said $4m worth of further supplies would follow in the coming days.

The shipment marked the resumption of aid to northern Iraq under the oil-for-food programme, although oil shipments from Iraq have not been restarted.