The UN says a total of 592,000 people live under siege in Syria – most surrounded by government forces – and another 4 million in hard-to-reach areas.
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Western powers have been frustrated by the Syrian government’s reluctance to allow desperately needed aid into rebel-held areas.
“If it were up to some Security Council members, they would have liked to airdrop weapons, not food or humanitarian aid”, Ja’afari added.
The UN Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss the air drops.
Staffan de Mistura, UN Special Envoy for Syria, speaks during a news conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland.
After addressing the closed meeting of the Security Council, UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien said that Syria must grant full access to all areas in need of aid.
“So, on Sunday, the United Nations, in accordance with the ICRC’s request, will ask Damascus to authorise humanitarian airdrops to reach localities for which the land access was denied by the Syrian regime”, he said.
“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.
“I told the Council that the operating space for humanitarian actors is shrinking as violence and attacks across Syria increase”, O’Brien said in an emailed statement.
Bouthaina Shabaan, a senior adviser to President Bashar Assad, told The Telegraph Thursday there was “no need” for the United Nations or major world powers to intervene and claimed that reports of humanitarian crises were untrue.
The United Kingdom’s ambassador to the U.N., Matthew Rycroft, said the aid going to Daraya on Wednesday was “too little, too late”, and his country’s delegation would raise the possibility of airdrops at the meeting. The WFP carried out a 21-pallet air drop of aid to a government-held area of Deir al-Zour in eastern Syria February, which ended in failure.
The UN food agency said it is “activating” the air delivery plan following a request from the Syria support group, led by the U.S. and Russian Federation, but that it needs authorisations and funding first.
“We need to press on with what the ISSG said about air drops”, he told reporters.
Humanitarian access in Syria has been a key sticking point in stalled UN-backed peace talks aimed at ending the five-year war that has killed at least 280,000 people and displaced millions.
A U.S. State Department official dismissed Shaaban as “a propaganda mouthpiece for the Assad regime trying in vain to mask the suppression of the Syrian people and the regime’s brutality”.
Ramzi Ezzedine Ramzi said airdrops were “very complex” and would need Damascus approval.
The predominantly Kurdish Syria Democratic Forces took at least four more villages on the way to the IS-held city of Manbij, according to two activist groups, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committee.
The Syrian Red Cross tweeted an image showing the convoy entering Darayya.
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The BBC reports a 48-hour ceasefire came into effect for Daraya on Wednesday, and another convoy arrived in Moadamiyeh, a rebel-held town and recipient of an worldwide aid delivery last month.
