It came as the regime bombarded another opposition-held town outside Damascus, preventing its besieged residents from receiving their first food delivery in years, a resident and monitor said.
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Lorries entered Daraya on Thursday with “food aid, including dry goods and flour, non-food aid as well as medical aid”, said Tamam Mehrez, operations director of the Syrian Red Crescent.
They also said the amount delivered was roughly half of what was needed.
The UN envoy made the remarks after the weekly meeting of the Syria humanitarian task force, which has for months been attempting to boost aid supplies to millions of Syrians trapped in hard-to-reach areas across the country.
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.
He said that WFP had delivered about 480 food rations that would feed around 2,400 individuals for a month.
Friday’s aid delivery came after weeks of negotiations and global pressure on the government – and Daraya is just one of several Syrian towns now under siege. WFP food boxes included rice, lentils, chickpeas, beans, bulgur, oil, salt and sugar.
“The UN is able to deliver to 17 out of 19 besieged areas”, Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the UN’s humanitarian office (OCHA), told AFP.
The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting of the events.
According to a press release issued by the United Nations agency, more convoys are planned to all of the 19 besieged locations in Syria as part of the plan for June, following the Government of Syria’s approval to reach all these locations.
Russia’s Churkin said a “great worry” was the situation in Aleppo, where the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front has stepped up military activity and “numerous civilian casualties” were reported from the group’s shelling.
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The US and Russian Federation have, meanwhile, been holding their own bilateral talks on the future of Syria, though once again these talks seem to be happening without much support in Syria, and with little expectation of a deal being reached any time soon.
