World Food Program gives Lebanon $5.4-B aid

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Crisis-hit Lebanon has secured $5.4 billion in aid over three years from the United Nations’ World Food Program, Lebanon’s caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati announced Monday.

Mikati told a press conference in Beirut alongside the agency’s representative in Lebanon, Abdallah Alwardat, that the aid money will be “shared equally” by Lebanese citizens and Syrian refugees.

Around two million Syrian refugees are in Lebanon. Nearly 830,000 of them are registered with the UN.

WFP schemes have supported Syrian refugees in Lebanon since 2012, when large numbers of them began fleeing the war that started a year earlier in their home country.