More aid reaches besieged Syrian town by air: WFP

The World Food Programme (WFP) announced Tuesday that a second successful high-altitude airdrop of food to the eastern Syrian town of Deir Ezzor has taken place on Tuesday morning, with 16,7 tons of food reaching the town besieged by Islamic State (IS) since March 2014.

The latest airdrop of 26 palettes contains enough food to feed 2,000 people for a month and adds to the 20 metric tons of supplies parachuted by a WFP-chartered aircraft on April 10.

"The plan is to keep on doing this many more times," said WFP spokesperson Bettina Luescher, adding that "the goal is to reach those 200,000 people in dire need."

Such operations are extremely complicated to carry out successfully and are only used as a last resort.

"As you can imagine dropping off pallets from a very high altitude needs lots of data. We are now getting meteorological data from multiple sources including the UK, Jordan, Russia and Syria," Luescher explained.

"We have support from Russian, Canadian and U.S.-based parachute companies to source various high altitude capable parachute systems, to get expert technical guidance and support for mission planning," she added.

WFP provides food to more than 4 million people every month across Syria, and has repeated their appeal for warring sides to lift sieges so that aid can be delivered to those most in need. Endit