UMM QASR, Iraq -- A vessel from the World Food Program (WFP) docked in this southern Iraqi port Friday bringing 14,000 tons of rice, in the first major shipment by the UN agency since the war.

It will take more than a week to unload the ship, named the rise. The sacks of rice will be distributed to different regions of Iraq through 32,000 agents still in place from the time of Saddam Hussein, according to the WFP.

In the Jordanian capital Amman, WFP spokesman Khaled Mansur said the rice was purchased by the agency through a donation by the United States.

Umm Qasr is Iraq's only deepwater port and the gateway for goods bought under the "oil-for-food" program, which let Saddam's regime sell oil under tight UN supervision to purchase basics.

The program is expected to get back on track after the return Thursday to Baghdad of the United Nation's humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, Ramiro Lopes da Silva, and other UN officials.

Sixteen million people in Iraq were entirely dependent on daily food rations before the start of the U.S.-led war on March 20.

Mansur reported that shipments were also picking up pace by land, with 29 trucks transporting 1,084 tons of food from Kuwait to the southern Iraqi towns of Basra and Nasiriyah on Thursday.

WFP staff in Basra have, meanwhile, retrieved the records of 1.8 million beneficiaries of food rations distributed under the frozen UN-sponsored food-for-oil program.

"This is a very important development to guarantee delivery of food rations to all the population of this province when the public distribution system is reactivated this month," Mansur said.

British Tycoon Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic Airline hopes to start flying into post-Saddam Baghdad, on Friday brought humanitarian aid to Basra on the first civilian plane to land in the city since the war.

A passenger jet bearing the airline's colors at Basra's International Airport, which has served as the British military base since the fall of Saddam's regime. It brought medical supplies, sheets and blankets.