UN spokeswoman Michele Montas said the distribution of food by the World Food Program (WFP) in coming days will focus on children, pregnant women and nursing mothers in the north, west and central regions of Haiti.

Rising food prices

Mamadou Bah, spokesman for the UN country team in Haiti, said the 8,000 tons are available stock and will be distributed over the next two months starting Thursday.

Anger over rising food prices has threatened the stability of the Caribbean nation, the poorest in the Western hemisphere and already haunted by chronic hunger.

The UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, will double its child-feeding programme to combat malnutrition and spend some US$1.6 million on water and sanitation projects in the northwest and Artibonite regions, Montas said.

40% increase

Globally, food prices have risen 40 per cent since mid-2007.

Haiti has been particularly hard hit because it imports nearly all of its food, including more than 80 per cent of its rice. Once-productive farmland has been abandoned as farmers struggle to grow crops in soil devastated by erosion, deforestation, flooding and tropical storms.

Hunger-provoked protests and looting in Port-au-Prince left at least seven dead last week, including a Nigerian officer with the 9,000-member UN peacekeeping force in Haiti who was pulled from a car and killed Saturday afternoon.

Three Sri Lankan peacekeepers on patrol were injured by gunfire early last week.

The riots also cost Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis his job.

Meanwhile, Brazilian members of the UN peacekeeping force distributed some 14 tons of rice, beans, sugar and cooking oil to 1,500 families in sprawling Cite Soleil Tuesday.

The WFP and the UN mission in Haiti continue to support various projects aimed at creating jobs, Montas said. Some 2,500 Haitians are already employed by these projects which have a combined budget of US$2.3 million, she said.

- AP