The sweeping aid operation was being rolled out as the scale of the
disaster was coming into sharper focus more than a week after the April
16 quake ravaged the country's Pacific coast.
Ecuador Earthquake(Reuters)
The United Nations will
distribute food to more than a quarter of a million people who survived
Ecuador's devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake but are growing hungry
in its aftermath, the organization said on Monday.
The
sweeping aid operation was being rolled out as the scale of the
disaster was coming into sharper focus more than a week after the April
16 quake ravaged the country's Pacific coast.
About
one in every 30 Ecuadorians, or half a million people, were in need of
food assistance after the quake disrupted their livelihoods, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) said in a statement.
WFP
was gearing up to assist the 260,000 most needy among them, including
children, people living in shelters and those hospitalized.
The
situation on the ground remained grim, WFP spokesman Alejandro Chicheri
told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.
The death toll in the small South American country passed 650 on Monday.
"There are a lot of people on roads asking for help," he said. "People are hoping to get assistance."
The
emergency aid will build on efforts by the government and scores of
foreign aid workers who are also distributing food, water and medicine
in the quake zone.
WFP estimates the cost of its
three-month operation at $34 million, a sum that will need to come from
public and private donors, Chicheri said.
President Rafael Correa announced on Saturday eight days of national mourning for the victims of the quake.
He
said last week the quake inflicted $2 billion to $3 billion of damage
to the oil-dependent economy and could knock 2 to 3 percentage points
off growth.
The April 16 earthquake was the worst the country has ever experienced in its history, the WFP said.
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