Syria approves aid deliveries to rebel-controlled areas affected by earthquake | earthquake news
Approving humanitarian deliveries to the insurgent-controlled northwest could speed aid to millions of people affected.
The Syrian government has approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to areas not under its control in the northwest of the country controlled by rebels following the earthquake, a move that could accelerate helping millions of people survive.
“The Council of Ministers approves… the provision of humanitarian aid to all regions of the Syrian Arab Republic,” a cabinet statement said on Friday, adding that the aid distribution aid should be overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. with the help of the United Nations.
The United Nations has been pushing for aid to flow more freely into Syria, particularly into the northwest of the country, where an estimated more than 4 million people were in need of aid before the earthquake. It wants aid moving across front lines in Syria and across border crossings with Turkey.
No aid shipments have reached the rebel-held northwest from government-controlled areas for three weeks.
The United Nations regularly provides aid to rebel-controlled areas, from neighboring Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa crossroads or from government-controlled areas.
More than 3,200 people were killed in Syria by the earthquake with many more injured and hundreds of thousands displaced. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that the death toll in Turkey had risen above 19,000.
Dozens of aid planes have arrived in areas held by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since Monday, but few have reached the northwest, prompting many residents to say they feel uncomfortable. forgotten.
Only two aid convoys have reached the area this week from Turkey, where authorities are engaged in an even larger earthquake relief operation of their own.
State media reported that the government had declared the areas hardest hit by Monday’s deadly earthquake – Latakia, Hama, Aleppo and Idlib – as disaster zones and would establish a funds to rebuild these areas.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called on the Security Council to allow the opening of more border crossings on the Turkey-Syria border to deliver UN aid to earthquake victims in the regions. rebel-controlled areas.
