UN Sends Text Messages Alerting Iraqis in Syria to Food Program

The United Nations has sent about 10,000 text messages on mobile phones to help inform Iraqi refugees in Syria that an international food distribution program for them begins tomorrow.

The UN Refugee Agency and the World Food Program will initially distribute enough rations to feed 33,000 Iraqis in Syria and about 50,000 by the end of the year, the UN said today in a statement. The UN agencies have pledged about $4.14 million to provide food for the next four months.

Syria has struggled to keep up with the surge of refugees from neighboring Iraq since violence increased there in May 2006, said World Food Program spokeswoman Brenda Barton.

``There are refugees that used to cross, but host families were able to take care of them,'' Barton said in a telephone interview from Rome. While the UN began providing some refugee food aid in Syria in March, the program that begins tomorrow will feed ``significantly more'' Iraqis than before, she said.

This is the first large-scale text message campaign to provide information about a humanitarian assistance program, said World Food Program spokesman Khaled Mansouri, speaking in a telephone interview from Cairo. ``This is a technology that will be used more and more in the future.''

Text messages to mobile phones are one of the most effective ways to communicate with communities of refugees who may not have stable addresses, the UN said.

The food will be distributed to families from a Red Crescent warehouse in Damascus and will be delivered by trucks to refugees located outside the city. The packages will include a variety of foods including rice, lentils, sugar, cheese, canned meat and fish, cracked wheat, tomato paste, pasta, beans, oil, tea and jam.

About 2 million Iraqis have fled their country since U.S.- led invasion began in 2003, and an additional 60,000 are leaving each month, according to the UN. The Syrian government estimates that about 1.4 million Iraqis have arrived there in the last three years. The World Food Program has estimated that about 50,000 of the Iraqis in Syria need food aid.