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NAIROBI, July 13 (AFP) - A convoy of 18 United Nations World Food Programme trucks has arrived in Kigali after crossing from Uganda, through territory held by Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels, WFP announced in a statement released here Tuesday.
The statement said the trucks delivered 531 tonnes of beans and 90 tonnes of maize on Tuesday, which will be distributed alongside other relief food to Rwanda's 900,000 displaced persons.
The convoy was the third after WFP re-opened the Katuna border crossing in northern Rwanda on June 9, just 10 days after the Rwandan government and the RPF rebels forged an agreement with WFP to allow the programme's relief trucks to use the more direct road corridor.
The second WFP road convoy through Katuna arrived in Kigali on July 1 with 1,018 tonnes of relief food.
WFP has also started to utilize extensively the Dar-es-Salaam - Shinyanga - Rusumu - Kigali rail and road line, which is proving pivotal for the massive delivery of relief food arriving through the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam.
Increased access by road to Kigali, which will now adequately deliver a total of the country's emergency food requirements of 15,000 tonnes per month, enabled WFP last Sunday officially to terminate its five-month-long airlift from Entebbe in Uganda to Kigali.
Since the WFP airlift began last February 24, some 26,276 tonnes of relief food have been delivered to Kigali.
lto/bm AFP AFP SEQN-0294
