Eritreans in rural areas are beginning to complain about sharp government cuts in the distribution of food aid, the U.N.'s World Food Programme said. 

The Red Sea state drastically trimmed food relief last month in an apparent attempt to ease reliance on foreign humanitarian assistance, aid workers and diplomats say. 

Aid officials say the government that month let in food aid for 72,000 people, a 94 percent reduction from the 1.3 million in August. 

Eritrea this week accused the United Nations of portraying a humanitarian crisis to distract attention from its failure to enforce a ruling that awarded a flashpoint town to Eritrea after a 1998-2000 frontier war with Ethiopia. 

The war killed an estimated 70,000 people, but the border has yet to be demarcated as stipulated by the legally binding ruling of an independent boundary commission, set up as part of a December 2000 peace accord. 

Ethiopia has said it accepts the ruling in principle, but has so far refused to allow the demarcation. 

Eritrea is one of the world's most food aid-dependent countries, with the United Nations estimating that roughly two-thirds of its 3.6 million people need food assistance. 

"Concerns regarding the suspension of most of the general food distributions are being raised by the beneficiaries," WFP said in a weekly report released late on Friday. "WFP field monitors ... reported increasing complaints," mostly from the elderly. 

The U.N. agency's report said specific pockets of the country could be seriously affected by the aid cuts. Malnutrition rates for children in some areas are between 15-30 percent. More than 70 percent of the rural population currently falls below the poverty line, it said.