TLI Staff
New Delhi: The first UN aid convoy of six trucks carrying shelter items and non-food item kits reached Syria on Thursday following strong tremors of earthquake hit the country along with Türkiye three days ago.
UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, has called for assurances that assistance inside Syria would not be held up or “politicized”.
According to UN aid coordinating office, the first lot of relief materials reached Bab al-Hawa, the only UN Security Council border crossing authorized for aid delivery.
Pedersen urged the response not to be politicized, and for the focus to be on “those who we can still save”.
The Special Envoy’s appeal followed a warning from UN humanitarians on Wednesday that the number of people in need of assistance in the country will have to be revised upwards.
“We need to do everything to make sure that there are no impediments whatsoever to delay lifesaving support that is needed in Syria,” Pedersen told journalists in Geneva after chairing a meeting of the Humanitarian Taskforce for Syria which facilitates aid deliveries to the war-ravaged country.
“I was struck by the unity in the meeting we had today by all the different Member States that participated,” he added.
On of the deadliest erthquakes that hit Syria and Turkiye three days back have killed as many as 17,500 people and destroyed properties worth billions of dollars.
Emergency relief from various countries have reached the quake-hit nations.
(Picture courtesy: UN Humanitarian Twitter)