The United Nations will send two additional convoys of emergency supplies to southern Lebanon to help alleviate an increasing humanitarian crisis, a UN spokesman said Thursday.

"Those convoys, which are being organized by the World Food Program (WFP), are to go to the towns of Jezzine and Sidon, and we also hope to go deeper into the south in the following days," Marie Okabe, spokesperson for Secretary-General Kofi Annan, told reporters at the UN headquarters.

The new supplies come after a successful aid delivery to the devastated port city of Tyre on Wednesday, said the spokesperson.

With more than one fifth of Lebanon's 3.8 million population believed to have abandoned their homes to escape the conflict, WFP said in a news release that it plans to increase the number of people targeted by its contribution to the emergency operation. Almost 360 Lebanese have been killed in the conflict so far with an estimated 1,500 injured, the great majority civilians, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its latest situation report, highlighting that 42 Israelis have also died in nearly two weeks of fighting.

"The conflict continues to cause enormous damage to residential areas and key civilian infrastructure with hundreds of bridges and road networks, mainly in the south (of Lebanon), systematically destroyed, leaving entire communities in the south inaccessible and hampering relief operations," OCHA said.

Out of an estimated 800,000 people affected by the violence, around 700,000 have fled their homes, with 125,000 or so staying in schools and public institutions in Lebanon and 150,000 estimated to have crossed the border into Syria, it added.

Source: Xinhua