The Syrian president asked for international help on Monday to rebuild the regions destroyed in the country by the earthquake registered a week ago, during a meeting with the UN emergency aid coordinator.
According to a statement from the Syrian presidency, Bashar al-Assad “stressed the importance of international efforts to help rebuild the infrastructure in the country.”
Damascus has been isolated from the diplomatic scene since the start of the war triggered by the violent repression of a popular uprising against power in 2011. This isolation affects international efforts to help the victims of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake. Richter that shook Turkey and Syria on February 6
Martin Griffiths, UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, also met on Monday in Damascus with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Moqdad, after traveling to Aleppo, a city in the north of the country under government control, where he attacked the left over 200,000 homeless, according to the World Health Organization.
In Aleppo, Griffiths told reporters that the UN was trying to raise funds for organizations helping victims in Syria.
“The appeals that will be launched in the coming days – one for Syria, another for Turkey – will cover humanitarian needs for about three months,” he estimated.
The earthquakes that devastated southern Turkey and northwestern Syria a week ago caused at least 40,943 deaths, according to the latest balance released this Monday by the World Health Organization (WHO).
Data advanced by the director of the WHO Regional Emergency Department, Rick Brennan, indicate that the earthquakes -first with a magnitude of 7.8, and then 7.5, on the open Richter scale- caused 31,643 deaths in Turkey and some 9,300 in Syria.
Despite the sanctions on the regime, parts of Syria under government control are receiving international aid through UN agencies, many of which have outposts in Damascus.
But with areas of the country where nearly 12 years of war have destroyed the health system remain under the control of rebel groups, help has been slow to come.
Griffiths acknowledged Sunday that the UN “has so far failed the people of northwestern Syria.”
Before the earthquake, almost all humanitarian aid for the more than four million people living in rebel-held areas in northwestern Syria came from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing.
This route was interrupted by the earthquake, before being resumed on Thursday, and calls are mounting for the opening of other crossing points.
On Sunday, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also met with the Syrian president and announced that he was willing to consider opening crossing points from government areas into rebel-held areas.
Source: TSF
