Moscow, a staunch ally of the Syrian regime, said the Daraya truce would be observed until 00:01 am on Friday (2101 GMT Thursday) to allow aid deliveries. The U.N. has dropped aid onto the city of Deir Ezzor, parts of which are loyal to Assad while other parts are controlled by Islamic State group fighters.
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“A very high number of humanitarian access requests made by the UN have been denied by the Syrian authorities”, the French ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre, told reporters after a closed-door Security Council meeting on Friday.
“If the Syrian government did not cooperate with the United Nations with regard to humanitarian aid, millions of Syrians would have died”, Ja’afari told reporters.
O’Brien said the United Nations only reached two of the besieged areas by land last month, representing some 20,000 people, or 3.4 percent of Syria’s total besieged population.
Last month members of the International Syria Support Group, which includes Russian Federation and the United States, agreed that the U.N. World Food Program should airdrop aid to Syria’s besieged communities from June 1 if land access was denied.
We reached many fewer places and many fewer people [in May] than we did in March and April, said Egeland, who is the Senior Advisor to UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura.
He added that the government in Damascus hasn’t provided permission for almost all of the areas in need.
“While air drops are complex, costly and risky, they are now the last resort to relieve human suffering across many besieged areas”, he said.
The aid convoy was organised jointly by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the United Nations. “Not only because we reached Darayya for the first time since 2012, since it was besieged, with the first limited humanitarian installment, but also because we actually plan to go to 11 besieged areas in the next few days”.
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 a year ago, and Waer, the last rebel-held neighbourhood in the central city of Homs, Ms Pitt said.
But it has since carried out 44 air drops over the city, delivering mainly rice, chickpeas and beans to meet the immediate needs of around 100,000 residents.
The world body had previously suggested that air drops would need government approval, undermining the idea that the government of President Bashar al-Assad could be strongarmed into accepting aid by the threat of air drops. “I think that’s quite clear”, Ramzy said.
“In urban areas, airdrops are not feasible, so you are talking about the use of helicopters”, he said.
The Anadolu Agency, citing military officials, said Wednesday that the strikes by USA -led coalition jets targeted IS positions north of the city of Aleppo, destroying a tank, two mortar positions, a headquarters’ building and three vehicles.
Bissan Fakih, a spokeswoman for advocacy group The Syria Campaign, said people in Daraya would only breathe a sigh of relief when they received food. Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said, “there has been some modest progress but … that is too little too late”.
“We need to see substantial change in strategy and an end to the starvation strategy”, Basma Kodmani said.
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These bombs are used by the Assad regime and consist of barrels packed with explosives. It said that 28 villages are now under SDF control.
