Doctors Without Borders (MSF) calls for an “urgent increase” in aid for the victims of the earthquake in Syria. This Sunday, a convoy of humanitarian aid arrived with 14 trucks loaded with tents and kits to help them through the winter, but MSF warns that the aid is arriving very slowly, at lower levels than before the earthquake.
“It is necessary to urgently increase the volume of aid to match the scale of the humanitarian crisis,” they say, stressing that current aid “does not even reach pre-earthquake volumes.”
“Aid is being channeled in negligible amounts,” said Hakim Khaldi, head of the MSF mission in Syria, adding that according to UN data, five days after the earthquake, “only” 10 trucks with aid had arrived in the areas. controlled by the rebels. from Syria through the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey.
“In the 10 days after the earthquake, the number of trucks crossing the border into northwestern Syria was lower than the weekly average for 2022,” it added.
The 14 trucks with more than 1,200 tents and kits to help survive the harsh winter, which arrived this Sunday, correspond to aid “outside the cross-border humanitarian mechanism organized by the United Nations.”
Before the earthquakes, almost all humanitarian aid for the more than four million people living in rebel-held areas was delivered through a single corridor.
Last Monday, the UN announced that Bashar al-Assad had agreed to open two more crossings between Turkey and northwestern Syria to allow the entry of international aid.
Since the earthquake, the UN has sent more than 170 truckloads of aid to northwestern Syria.
Syria has been going through a civil war since 2011, triggered by the repression of demonstrations in favor of democracy, which resulted in half a million deaths, millions of displaced persons and fragmented the country, which has been facing in recent weeks the consequences of a devastating earthquake that resulted in its epicenter in Turkey.
The most recent United Nations balance points to more than 5,800 deaths in Syria due to the earthquakes. In total, there are more than 46,000 deaths, most of them in Turkey.
Source: TSF
