YAOUNDE, March 13 (Xinhua) -- The World Food Program (WFP) has said that a "catastrophic funding crisis" has forced it to cut operations across the board in the central African country of Chad.

WFP assistance will be suspended for 1.2 million Sudanese refugees and crisis-affected people in the country in April due to funding shortfalls, including for new Sudanese refugees, the WFP said in a statement Tuesday.

"We are in a race against time. The small window to pre-position supplies is closing rapidly and our funding is drying up at this dramatic juncture," WFP Chad director Pierre Honnorat said. "We've already cut our operations in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, leaving hungry people close to starvation."

The WFP said it "urgently" requires 242 million U.S. dollars to support people in Chad for the next six months.

"We are forcing families to skip meals and eat less nutritious food, laying the ground for crises of nutrition, crises of instability, and crises of displacement. We need donors to prevent the situation from becoming an all-out catastrophe," Honnorat said.

More than 550,000 refugees and 150,000 Chadian returnees have crossed from Sudan into Chad since war erupted 10 months ago between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, according to the International Organization for Migration. Enditem

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