Western powers have accused Syria’s government of dropping barrel bombs on the town of Daraya hours after it received its first food aid in nearly four years.
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Earlier Thursday, the United Nations said Syria had given approval for humanitarian convoys to reach all of the country’s 19 besieged areas, including rebel-held Daraya, by the end of the month.
Trucks from the United Nations and Syrian Arab Red Crescent brought a month’s supply of food for 2,400 people as well as health and hygiene items for the entire estimated population of 4,000 in the rebel-held town near Damascus, spokesman Jens Laerke said.
The Observatory and local council estimate that 8,000 people live in Daraya, one of the first towns in Syria to erupt in anti-government demonstrations in 2012 and one of the first to come under a government-controlled siege the same year.
Lifting the siege on rebel-held areas was a key demand by the opposition during indirect peace talks held in Geneva earlier this year. The suburb has been under a government blockade since residents expelled security forces in the early part of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
Brett McGurk, US envoy to the anti-ISIL coalition backing the SDF, said the move had severed an important route for ISIL (also known as ISIS) fighters looking to attack Europe.
The land convoy – the second to the area since March 22 – also included mattresses, blankets, diapers, vaccines, water pumps and generators, Pawel Krzysiek said.
The UN’s World Food Program has been conducting humanitarian airdrops over the area, with consent from Damascus.
According to Tharwat, the aid convoy that arrived Friday is the first of a number of Egypt’s planned humanitarian aid deliveries to besieged Syrian towns.
A statement by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the operation finished before dawn Friday. The video appeared genuine and corresponded to Associated Press reporting.
On Friday, they received their first food-aid delivery since 2012.
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Access to al Waer in Homs province was still under discussion, he said.
