First UN team crosses into rebel-held Syria since massive quake
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
People search under the rubble of damaged buildings in rebel-held town of Harem, Syria, on Feb 13, 2023.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
SARMADA, Syria - The first UN delegation to visit rebel-held north-western Syria since last week’s earthquake crossed over from Turkey
More than 37,000 people were killed when the quake devastated swathes of Syria and neighbouring Turkey on Feb 6, at least 3,600 of them in Syria, according to government officials and emergency services in rebel areas.
“A multi-agency mission has gone this morning from the Turkey side across the border crossing... It’s largely an assessment mission,” the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Syria director Kenn Crossley said in Geneva.
The delegation comprised deputy regional humanitarian coordinator David Carden and Ms Sanjana Quazi, who heads the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Turkey.
They visited a WFP centre in Sarmada, near the Turkish border, and held a 40-minute meeting with officials at the Bab al-Hawa crossing – the only transit point on the Turkish border for UN aid deliveries to rebel-held areas.
Activists and emergency teams in the north-west have decried the UN’s slow response to the quake in rebel-held areas, contrasting it with the planeloads of humanitarian aid that have been delivered to government-controlled airports.
“I don’t want to sit here and give excuses, but I wanted to share that we are all collectively in the same place,” Quazi told reporters in the rebel-held town of Sarmada, close to the border.
“I think we also know that it is not enough,” she said, adding that the UN was doing its best to provide aid to the northwest.
They visited a WFP centre in Sarmada and held a 40-minute meeting with officials at the Bab al-Hawa crossing – the only transit point on the Turkish border for UN aid deliveries to rebel-held areas.
On a visit to the Turkish side of the Bab al-Hawa crossing on Sunday, during which he met Syrian rescue teams, UN relief chief Martin Griffiths admitted that the world body had “so far failed the people in north-west Syria”.
Mr Griffiths also visited government-controlled areas devastated by the earthquake.
Before the quake struck, almost all the humanitarian aid for the more than four million people living in rebel-controlled areas was delivered from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing. AFP
