On Friday Syrian government has approved the delivery of humanitarian aid across the front lines of the country’s 12 year old civil war. That’s a move that could speed up the arrival of the help for the millions of the people affected by the earthquake.
Almost 22,000 people across site of the epicentre in Turkey and Syria have been killed by the earthquake. The places which are hardest hit are out of Syrian government control and are yet to receive any meaningful international aid.
The Aid distribution will take place in cooperation with the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, state median said, to “guarantee the arrival of this aid to those who need it”.
The Syrian government, which lost control over swathes of territory during the war including nearly all of its border with Turkey, has long objected to cross-border operation saying it reaches Syrian sovereignty.
The United Nations has pushed for 8 to flow more freely into Syria, specially into the country's northwest an area controlled by the rebels opposed to President Bashar al Assad via frozen frontlines and through crossings with Turkey.
Dozens of planes load of aid have right in the areas held by second President Bashar al Assad government sense Monday, but little has reached the northwest leading many residents to say the feel left alone. The world body has delivered aid to the northwest since 2014 via Turkey, bypassing territory controlled by Assad.
More than 3,200 people have died in Syria from the earthquake, with many more injured and hundreds of thousands displaced. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that the death toll in Turkey had risen to 19,388.
“The Syrian cabinet has approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to all parts of the country, including through the front lines from inside the areas controlled by the state to areas that are out of the state control,” Sana news agency reported.
The Swiss ambassador to the UN, Pascale Baeriswyl, told reporters in New York on Friday that Switzerland and Brazil have requested a Security Council meeting to discuss the humanitarian situation in Syria.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he hoped the UN could use more than one border crossing to deliver aid to Syria. A UN diplomat told The National that Security Council members had discussed expanding access and including one or more additional border crossings.
State media has reported that the government has also declared areas worst picked by the quake the Lattakia, Hama, Aleppo and Idlib, disaster zones and what set up a rehabilitation fund.
More than 24,000 deaths, corpses still coming out of rubble in Turkey
Twitter engineer allegedly got fired by Elon Musk due to his declining popularity
