Sixty Angolan children abducted by UNITA forces earlier this month were freed on Friday, but an unknown number of juveniles remain captives within the rebel movement's ranks, humanitarian officials told IRIN. The children, along with two adults, were released at Camabatela in the northern province of Kwanza Norte. They had been abducted from an orphanage more than 300 km south run by the development agency ADPP, during an attack on the town of Caxito on 5 May.

WFP has distributed 15 days' worth of emergency rations to about 3,000 people who fled Caxito in Bengo province after a UNITA attack on 5 May. The Cacuaco municipal authority, just outside the capital Luanda, resettled about 2,500 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Caxito on four hectares of land in Bairro Caop Velho, Funda, WFP said in its latest situation report.

More than five children are dying each day from malnutrition in the city of Camapuca in Angola's central Bie province. "We are really shocked by the level of malnutrition that we are discovering in Camacupa. We are doing as much as we can to reduce mortality through our feeding centres, but this is not enough. People need urgently a general food distribution," Erwin Van der Borght, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) head of mission in Angola, said in a statement on Wednesday.