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World Food Programme sounds alarm as food prices rise in MidEast

Currency depreciation and pandemic job losses in neighboring Lebanon and Syria have contributed to major food inflation in both countries.

AAREF WATAD/AFP via Getty Images
A Syrian volunteer hands out plates of food prepared by a local charity for the Ramadan fast-breaking meal at a camp for people displaced by conflict in the town of Sarmada in Syria's northwestern Idlib province on April 13, 2021. — AAREF WATAD/AFP via Getty Images

Middle East countries have experienced some of the highest price increases in food, the UN World Food Programme said Thursday, warning that millions of families already struggling with pandemic job losses are unable to put nutritious food on the table. 

"High food prices are hunger's new best friend," the WFP’s chief economist Arif Husain said in a statement. "We already have conflict, climate and COVID-19 working together to push more people into hunger and misery. Now food prices have joined the deadly trio."

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