Salvador : aid needed for reconstruction

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO, has appealed for urgent aid for the victims of the two earthquakes which have hit El Salvador this year.

It said seeds, fertilisers and tools were urgently needed to help local farmers during the planting season in April and May. Earlier this week the World Food Programme warned that thousands of people were facing hunger, as food stocks ran out. The President of the Inter-American Development Bank, Enrique Iglesias, who's in El Salvador, will be visiting the affected areas and is expected to sign a twenty-million-dollar loan agreement with the government later today to support reconstruction efforts.

Twelve-hundred people were killed and thousands injured in the earthquakes.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service