Frustrated and unhappy, the United Nations envoy for Syria abruptly cut short a Thursday meeting of its humanitarian task force because aid convoys to besieged cities and towns have been impeded this month amid a surge in fighting in the country’s 5-1/2-year civil war.
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Earlier, he said aid convoys had been unable to reach civilians trapped in besieged areas across Syria this month.
Staffan de Mistura hoped to ratchet up pressure on world powers – notably the United States and Russian Federation – to help produce a long-sought 48-hour pause in fighting in the northern city of Aleppo, in the face of a recent government offensive. Up to two million people on both sides lack access to clean water after infrastructure was damaged in bombing.
Escalating violence there, where Russian Federation and Iran are supporting bombing campaigns against the rebels, some of whom are backed by Arab and Western powers, has caused the breakdown of Geneva peace talks overseen by de Mistura.
The UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have delivered aid to nearly 1.3 million Syrians living in blockaded or hard-to-reach areas so far in 2016, but the movement of the aid convoys has primarily been hampered by access restrictions.
The Syrian opposition has said it wants to see a credible pause in violence, as well as improved humanitarian aid access, before peace talks can resume. -Gen. Igor Konashenkov says that Russian Federation would back the initiative on condition that the aid convoys should travel to both rebel-controlled and government-controlled parts of the city. Four more corridors were opened several days later. Moscow also said it was ready to guarantee safety to aid convoys in cooperation with the Syrian regime.
ALEPPO: His face bloodied and completely covered in dust, the little boy sits quietly, staring ahead, dazed and shocked after an apparent air strike in the Syrian city of Aleppo. The boy was treated for a head injury and survived.
A doctor in Aleppo identified the boy as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, who was brought to the hospital known as “M10” overnight following strike on the rebel-held Qaterji district. Omran and his family were treated at a local hospital and released.
Since the image’s release, the photo has reverberated around the globe, much like that of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose body washed ashore on a Turkish beach past year.
“I’ve taken a lot of pictures of children killed or wounded in the strikes that rain down daily”, Rslan told AFP on Thursday, the day after he captured the image that has gone viral on social networks.
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Aleppo has been divided since 2012 between government forces in the west and the Takfiri terrorists in the east.
