Aid effort founders while water and food crisis spreads

The United Nations signalled its return to Iraq yesterday by starting relief operations in Umm Qasr after aid agencies said the British-led humanitarian effort in the port was failing to meet even basic needs.

Security experts from the UN said Iraq's sole deep-water port, captured two weeks ago, was only now sufficiently secure to enable its workers to start funnelling supplies deeper into southern Iraq. A week ago, Anglo-American forces had declared the port open with a large fanfare as the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Sir Galahad docked with food, water and medicines.

But aid workers trying to use the port as a base for operations yesterday were sharply critical of conditions, saying much of the population was short of water, and distribution of supplies was being hampered by a lack of vehicles and workers.

The UN, which ordered all its international staff to leave Iraq on 17 March, said it was concerned Iraqis would begin to run out of food in five weeks unless supplies were restored via entry points such as Umm Qasr. Until the outbreak of war, some 60 per cent of Iraqis relied on imported food from the UN's oil-for-food programme.

Catholic Agency for Overseas Aid (Cafod), a British aid agency, said truck drivers employed to distribute water in Umm Qasr from a pipeline built by British forces from Kuwait were selling it by the litre, leaving hundreds of poor Iraqis thirsty. A spokesman for the organisation said: "We expected that for a town of 40,000 people to be under coalition control for two weeks it would have had a humanitarian impact. But it is horrendous. People don't even have enough water."

There were reports that Umm Qasr's hospital had been without water for three days, and Iraqi troops had stolen UN vehicles and even the port's two train engines to flee advancing Anglo-American forces.

Apart from the Sir Galahad, none of the ships waiting in the Gulf to deliver aid, including two Australian vessels carrying 100,000 tons of wheat, have been able to enter the port because of mine-clearing operations and silt blocking the shipping channel.

The Ministry of Defence said it was investigating the claims of charging for water supplies but insisted the British-built pipeline was bringing in enough water for 160,000 people. Aid vessels would be docking within days. A spokeswoman said: "Any report of charging is worrying but we believe it is an isolated incident. We always knew there would be difficulties in mounting this sort of operation but there is water flowing into Umm Qasr and we expect more aid to be flowing through the port very soon."

Others admitted the military was not geared up for the task of distributing the tons of rice, wheat, lentils, cooking oil and detergent stacked in Umm Qasr's sprawling port warehouse. An American logistics specialist said: "We thought the distribution would be the easiest part. It turns out that's the part we haven't got down to yet."

The World Health Organisation said there was a general water crisis beyond Umm Qasr as the populations of towns and cities including Basra struggle to restore supplies cut during fighting. Iain Simpson, of the WHO, said: "We have reports that 1.5 million people across southern Iraq lack access to water. Unless people have access to clean, safe water, there will be outbreaks of disease, and diarrhoeal disease will be the first to come. If they do not get that supply there are serious risks to health."

The UN said it expected staff from the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN children's fund (Unicef) to enter Umm Qasr within days. Louise Frechette, the deputy secretary general, said that although the humanitarian situation in Iraq was not "very critical" it was likely to deteriorate rapidly as an infrastructure weakened by a decade of sanctions collapsed in a time of war. Unicef said its efforts to reach mothers and children in Baghdad and southern Iraq were being hampered by daytime bombing.

But the International Committee of the Red Cross said two trucks – its first convoy to enter Iraq since 19 March – arrived in Basra yesterday with medical supplies, water containers and blankets.

Nada Doumani, of the ICRC, said: "We are crossing Allied and Iraqi lines to deliver aid. The population in Basra is clearing the shops of food as the siege goes on. They expect the shelves to be bare by the end of the weekend."

A convoy of 10 tankers carrying 37,000 litres of water was sent by Unicef from Kuwait into the towns of Safwan and Zubayr and a 30-truck convoy with supplies for 68 hospitals in central and southern Iraq arrived in Baghdad from Jordan yesterday. The first WFP shipment into northern Iraq, 20 lorries carrying 475 tons of flour, was also to enter from Turkey overnight.