( dpa )- The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) issued a plea Wednesday for 4.4 million dollars to back its scheme to expand a food aid operation for Somali refugees in Yemen. The agency said in a statement it plans to provide a total of 5,000 tons of food to 43,500 of the most vulnerable Somali refugees in Yemen during the period from February 2008 to January 2010. This is up from 33,000 people the agency was previously helping, according to the statement. Since the outbreak of civil war in Somalia in 1991, Yemen has become a magnet for refugees fleeing violence and drought and a gateway to the oil-rich countries of the Arabian Peninsula and Europe. Thousands of Somali refugees make the dangerous crossing of the Gulf of Aden to Yemen every year on small boats run by smugglers operating from Somali ports. "More and more people are arriving on Yemen's shores after barely surviving the dangerous journey by boat," said Mohammad al- Kouhene , the WFP's Yemen country director. "It is up to us to help them as Yemen's economy is already overstretched," he said. Al- Kouhene said the appeal for the new fund was based on the anticipated arrival of new refugees to Yemen, as well as refugee population growth at the isolated camp of Kharaz in Lahj . Yemen, one of the world's poorest countries, has recently called on the international community to provide more assistance to help it cope with the increasing numbers of Somali refugees, saying that its limited resources could not offer necessary aid to them. Yemen is the only Arabian Peninsula country that is a signatory of the 1951 Geneva Convention and 1967 protocol on the status of refugees. It has been automatically granting prime facie refugee status to Somalis arriving illegally in the country since the collapse of their government in 1991.
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