The UN World Food Program has halted its humanitarian operations in a number of southern Somali regions due to escalating attacks from armed groups, the organization said on its website on Tuesday.
"Rising threats and attacks on humanitarian operations, as well as the imposition of a string of unacceptable demands from armed groups, have made it virtually impossible for the World Food Programme (WFP) to continue reaching up to one million people in need in southern Somalia," the WFP said in a statement.
The organization has also expressed its concern over rising hunger in the area due to "unprecedented and inhumane attacks on purely humanitarian operations." About 75% of the country's vulnerable people are estimated to live in the south.
The WFP would continue to carry out food distributions in other regions of the country, including the capital Mogadishu.
Somalia, which has been without an effective government since 1991, is considered one of the most dangerous countries for foreigners with frequent abductions of journalists and workers of international missions.
Militants of the Al Shabaab group, which controls most of Somalia with allied Islamist groups, have earlier banned the UN Development Programme, the Department of Safety and Security and the UN Political Office for Somalia from working in the country, accusing them of being "enemies of Islam and Muslim people" and of supporting "the government of traitors" and its troops.
Following the warning, the militants raided offices of the organization in two Somali cities.
The UN currently has no permanent foreign staff in the African state, and coordinates its operations through a mission in neighboring Kenya.
MOSCOW, January 5 (RIA Novosti)
