The United States has backtracked on emergency food aid cuts it announced for 14 countries, restoring assistance to six of them, the UN's World Food Program said on Wednesday.

The UN agency, already struggling with financing woes, said on Monday that the United States advised it that Washington was eliminating emergency food aid to those 14 poor and otherwise troubled countries.

The WFP said the cuts amounted to a "death sentence" for millions of hungry or starving people.

But the United States has now reversed course and said it will continue sending food aid to Somalia, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Ecuador, a WFP program official told AFP.

Still, with aid now cut off for the other eight countries, "hunger will deepen, millions of lives will be lost, entire regions will be destabilized," the official said.

These eight countries are Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Yemen, Chad, Mali, Nigeria and Madagascar.

The Trump administration has largely gutted USAID, the main US humanitarian assistance organisation. It previously had a yearly budget of US$42.8 billion, which was 42 percent of all aid money disbursed around the world. (AFP)