The joint U.N., International Committee of the Red Cross, and Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy that reached Daraya Wednesday contained medicines, vaccines, baby formula, and “nutritional items for children”, the ICRC said, but no food.
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They said the Syrian government had failed to respect a 1 June deadline for widespread aid distribution agreed by world and regional powers.
On Wednesday, the besieged Syrian town of Daraya, a rebel-held suburb of Damascus where President Bashar al-Assad has refused to allow aid to starving Syrians, got its first United Nations aid convoy since 2012.
Syria is working with a United Nations representative to find ways to deliver food and medical aid to all Syrian people isolated by the country’s civil war, a top advisor to President Bashar al-Assad told a conference on Thursday (June 2) via Skype from Damascus, reported Reuters news agency.
The US-backed SDF last week launched an offensive north of the jihadists’ Syrian stronghold of Raqa city.
Mr Tuthill added: “The situation is also serious in other areas under siege throughout Syria.It is vital that we can deliver more aid and we urge everyone involved to allow access to humanitarian workers and facilitate the flow of assistance”.
“I think that we need to press on with what the ISSG said, which is in that scenario there needs to be air drops”.
“It’s a positive step”, Churkin told reporters.
Syrian Ambassador Bashar Jaafari denied that his government was blocking aid and refused to answer questions on whether Damascus would allow the airdrops. The suburb last received aid one month ago. According to a February report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of some 470,000 people, injured 1.9 million others, and displaced almost half of the country’s pre-war population of about 23 million within or beyond its borders.
Beirut:A humanitarian aid convoy on Wednesday entered the rebel-held Syrian town of Daraya, the Red Cross said, in the first such delivery since a regime siege began in 2012. He declined to provide details.
The appeal comes ahead of a Security Council meeting on Friday called to discuss access for humanitarian aid to the besieged areas.
Syria rejected United Nations requests to send aid to Zabadani, a mountain resort which has been besieged by government forces and Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters since previous year, and Waer, the last rebel-held neighborhood in the central city of Homs, Pitt said.
“Clearly the regime is trying to diffuse pressure but clearly one convoy that carries only medical supplies is not enough”, a spokeswoman for Syria’s main opposition group said.
But even the State Department now sees little point in escalating the conflict with USA involvement that would likely lead to even more bloodshed in a war that has killed more than a quarter of a million people, displaced half the Syrian population and evolved into a tangled battlefield of competing groups and agendas.
Vitaly Churkin, the United Nations ambassador of Assad’s close military ally Russian Federation, suggested Russia was not necessarily opposed to airdrops.
“There are people under the rubble and we’re still looking for the missing”, a civil defence volunteer who gave his name as Khaled said.
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Russia, like Assad’s other ally Iran, is widely seen as having significant influence over the Damascus government. “And of course we call for the complete lifting of all sieges”.
