The UN food agency said Friday it aims to provide half a million Malians with emergency food aid this year, especially in the restive north, as a survey showed that nearly all those who have fled the area hope to return home soon.

The UN food agency said Friday it aims to provide half a million Malians with emergency food aid this year, especially in the restive north, as a survey showed that nearly all those who have fled the area hope to return home soon.

The UN World Food Program aims "to reach around 564,000 people in Mali, (including) more than 400,000 crisis-affected people in the north in Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal in need of assistance," spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs told reporters in Geneva.

The United Nations agency's plan includes providing emergency food aid to some 135,000 people either displaced by conflict or hosting the displaced in southern Mali, as well as "fragile communities suffering from the consequences of the crisis", she said.

The plan would require $45 million (35 million euros) immediately to allow the WFP to buy some 30,000 metric tons of food to last through June, and would require a total of $137 million for the full year, the WFP said.

Some 380,000 people have fled northern Mali since the conflict began a year ago, including more than 150,000 who have sought refuge in neighboring countries, according to recent UN figures.

The west African nation imploded after a coup last March by soldiers who blamed the government for the army's humiliation at the hands of north African Tuareg rebels, who had launched an uprising in the north two months earlier.