United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths acknowledged on Sunday that the people of north-western Syria are “being left behind” due to the lack of international aid to deal with the effects of this week’s devastating earthquake. soften.
Griffiths is at the Syrian-Turkish border assessing the situation, having estimated on Saturday that the death toll from the quake could exceed 50,000 when the count ends.
So far, the earthquake has claimed more than 5,000 lives in Syria and more than 25,000 in southern Turkey.
The UN official, in turn, acknowledged the international failure to respond to the needs of the affected population in Syria.
“We have failed the people of northwestern Syria. They feel abandoned, and rightly so, hoping for international aid that has not arrived,” Griffiths lamented on Twitter.
And he continued, “My duty and my duty now is to correct that mistake. That’s what I’m focusing on now”.
The death toll from Monday’s earthquake in northeastern Syria has already risen to 5,273, according to the balance sheet released by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
This number is divided into two parts: 2,063 in the regions controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and 3,210 in the areas of the Salvation Government and the Syrian Interim Government, according to data from the Observatory.
Source: DN
