WFP is reaching tens of thousands of people with urgently needed food assistance, with plans to scale up sharply following Monday's deadly earthquakes that struck along the border between Türkiye and Syria.
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"Thousands of lives have been lost," WFP's Executive Director David Beasley said on Twitter, "but our teams are on the ground."
As of Wednesday, WFP had reached 64,000 affected people in both countries with ready-to-eat food rations, family food packages and hot meals. The food being distributed requires no cooking and provides immediate relief for families whose precarious position is made worse by freezing temperatures.
"That's WFP," Beasley added. "Lives matter. We care. We're there."
In Türkiye, which hosts the world's largest refugee population, WFP is also coordinating with officials in the quake-hit southeastern part of the country to provide family food packages to camps housing tens of thousands of Syrians, as well as Turkish nationals newly displaced by the disaster.
Working with the Turkish Red Crescent and partners, WFP will also support municipalities in Türkiye's southeast to reactivate and expand soup kitchens set up during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide daily hot meals to quake-affected families.
In Syria, where the quakes have further complicated an acute humanitarian crisis, WFP and its local partners have so far delivered ready-to-eat rations and daily hot meals to 38,000 people in shelters.
In northwestern Syria, 4.1 million people - more than 90 percent of the population - already depended on humanitarian aid. Twelve years of conflict have displaced almost 3 million people from their homes and left them living in precarious conditions.
"A region plagued by years of compounding crises faces yet another one, with unimaginable loss and destruction. Immediate relief cannot be delayed," said WFP Regional Director in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Eastern Europe Corinne Fleischer. "WFP's strong footprint in both countries enabled us to immediately mobilize our staff, logistics capacity and partners to respond to people's most immediate food needs."
To meet the urgent food needs, WFP is appealing for US$46 million to support a total of 500,000 people in Türkiye and Syria. This includes hot meals and food rations to 200,000 newly displaced people in Syria and 300,000 people in Türkiye, including 70,000 refugees.
WFP mourns all the lives lost in this tragedy, including one of its own staff members.
