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France asks United Nations to begin Syria air drops
It says high-altitude airdrops would be possible in the villages of Fouah and Kfraya, in addition to the northeastern city of Deir Ezzor where airdrops have already taken place.
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The aid convoy was organised jointly by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the United Nations.
On Wednesday, the first aid convoy since 2012 reached Damascus suburbs Daraya and Moadamiyeh.
The United States, Britain and France have urged the United Nations to begin air drops of humanitarian aid to besieged areas in Syria.
Shabaan spoke from Syria by Skype Thursday to a group in Washington.
Egeland says the companies who are subcontracted to carry out airlifts for WFP require government authorization. “For this, they need the permission of the Syrian government”, he said, reporting from the United Nations headquarters in NY. “But it remains an option if land deliveries do not go through”, he said.
The main Syrian opposition group has called on the U.N.to broker a countrywide cease-fire for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins next week.
“While air drops are hard, costly and risky, they are now the last resort to relieve human suffering across many besieged areas”, he said in a statement. But access by road has been repeatedly rejected by the Assad government and its forces manning checkpoints. “We need to reach al-Wae’r and we are trying in the next days”.
“I don’t think there is something imminent”, he cautioned.
If humanitarian ground convoys fail to get through, the U.N. World Food Programme said Thursday it has plans for helicopter airdrops to urban areas where Syrians, many women and children, are starving.
Meanwhile, the Security Council announced it will formally ask Damascus to allow air drops to besieged areas.
Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said “it’s too little, too late, but it’s welcome”.
The delivery comes after a push by world powers for wider humanitarian access in Syria, where regime forces and other armed groups have besieged civilian populations, causing severe shortages of food and other essentials.
Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor, James Bays, said the important development is that the United Nations has said that it is going to make a formal request for airdrops to the Syrian government.
Kodmani said they should not be fooled by the Syrian government allowing in one convoy “to defuse the pressure”.
The diplomatic fiasco prompted a U.S.- and Russia-backed task force to approve airdrops. “But we didn’t have even that for most types of medicine”. “We are advancing on several fronts”. Turkey has also shut its border. It called on Turkey and Europe to open their borders to these refugees. It broadcast footage showing at least one wounded person being carried into a vehicle as two ambulances parked outside the mosque. State TV said the blast occurred as people were leaving the Khulafa Rashideen mosque after afternoon prayers.
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And in Syria s second city Aleppo, six children were among 19 civilians killed in regime bombing, the civil defence said, while in the government coastal stronghold of Latakia, a suicide bombing near a mosque killed at least two people.