CAIRO, Jun 22 (Aswat Masriya) – Egypt's foreign ministry said on Wednesday that it signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nation's World Food Program regarding emergency aid worth $2.8 million for thousands of Egyptian returnees from Libya.

In a statement published on state-owned MENA, the ministry said that the project would enable returnees from Libya to receive monthly food vouchers worth $39 per person over three months, reaching a total amount of $2.8 million.

The aid will be delivered to around 60,000 individuals who have returned from Libya and are registered with the ministry of manpower, according to the statement.

The delivery of aid will start in Sohag and Qena provinces as they have received the largest number of returnees, Assistant to the Foreign Minister Ambassador Hisham Badr said. Aid will later be distributed in Minya, Assiut and Kafr el-Sheikh.

Thousands of Egyptians have been forced to leave their jobs and return to Egypt amid a turbulent environment of armed conflict in Libya.

Violence has intensified in Libya particularly since 2014, when conflicting parties sought to take control of the country.

Accordingly, Egypt has warned against travel to Libyan territories and called for Egyptians living in Libya to exercise extreme caution.

According to the World Food Program (WFP), most returnees originate from the "economically stressed" region of Upper Egypt and have no means of subsistence. They also face the challenge of finding employment.

Therefore, WFP believes that there is "an immediate need to support vulnerable and food-insecure Egyptian returnees in a context of rising food prices and an already overstretched social and economic system."