ISLAMABAD, Nov 23: The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) started airlifting food to northern Afghanistan on Friday to build up stocks for more than 274,000 desperately hungry people.

An aircraft carrying about 17 tons of wheat flour left Kolyiab airport in southern Tajikistan on a 30-minute flight to Faizabad to establish an air bridge in drought and war-ravaged Afghanistan.

“This is the first time a humanitarian airlift has been launched from Tajikistan and the first time in this current crisis that WFP has used aircraft to send food into Afghanistan,” the UN agency said in a statement in Islamabad.

Weather permitting, 2,000 tons of food are proposed to be airlifted to Faizabad in the next few weeks from where they are to be brought by trucks to remote areas of the region.

Russia has provided a fleet of heavy duty trucks, some of them fitted with snow-clearing equipment, for the purpose.

“Time is ticking, winter has started and we need to get this food quickly into the less accessible regions of northeastern Afghanistan. The air bridge will enable us to get food rapidly,” explained Burkard Oberle, WFP’s director for Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Filpo Grandi, regional emergency coordinator for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), warned that if “fragile security” situation in Afghanistan does not improve the access of relief agencies to vulnerable and needy population will be reduced.—dpa