FOOD meant to feed 27,000 starving children in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be incinerated instead, a senior US official said on Wednesday.

This follows President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision in January to close the United States Agency for International Development (USAid).

Deputy secretary of state Michael Rigas told US legislators that nearly 500 tonnes of high-energy biscuits, intended to be used as emergency food for malnourished young children, expired this month while sitting in a warehouse in Dubai.

“I think this was just a casualty of the shutdown of USAid,” Mr Rigas said, adding that he was “distressed” that the food went to waste.

Aid officials managed to save 622 tonnes of the energy-dense biscuits in June – sending them to Syria, Bangladesh and Myanmar – but 496 tonnes, worth $793,000 (around £592,000) before they expired this month, will be destroyed, according to two internal USAid memos, dated May 5 and May 19, and four other sources.

The wasted biscuits will be sent to landfills or incinerated in the United Arab Emirates, two sources said. That will reportedly cost the US government an additional $100,000 (£75,000).

The closure of USAid left more than 60,000 tonnes of food aid rotting in stores around the world, the Reuters news agency reported in May.

Democratic Senator Tim Kaine said legislators had specifically raised the food issue with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March and were promised that no food aid would be wasted.

In a statement on July 1, Mr Rubio said the US was abandoning what he called “a charity-based model” and would focus on empowering countries to grow sustainably.

The World Food Programme says 319 million people have limited access to food worldwide. Of those, 1.9 million people are in famine conditions, including in Sudan and Gaza.