Syria’s president agreed to open two new crossing issues from Turkey to the rustic’s rebel-held northwest to ship desperately wanted support and kit to lend a hand thousands and thousands of earthquake sufferers, the United Nations introduced past due Monday.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the settlement via Syrian chief Bashar Assad to open crossing issues at Bab Al-Salam and Al Raée for an preliminary length of 3 months. Currently, the UN has most effective been allowed to ship support to the northwest Idlib house thru a unmarried crossing at Bab Al-Hawa, at Syrian best friend Russia’s insistence.
The announcement adopted a gathering in Damascus previous Monday between Assad and UN humanitarian leader Martin Griffiths, who spent the weekend viewing the devastation brought about via the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that ravaged southern Turkey and northwestern Syria.
Guterres’ professional announcement got here right through a closed assembly of the UN Security Council the place diplomats mentioned Griffiths introduced Assad’s settlement to open the 2 new crossings right through a digital briefing.
Syria’s UN ambassador, Bassam Sabbagh, informed journalists whilst the assembly used to be happening that Assad held a “positive and constructive meeting” with Griffiths and “confirmed the need for urgent aid to enter all regions in Syria, including those under occupation and under control of the armed terrorist groups.”
Brazil and Switzerland, which oversee Syria’s cross-border problems within the council, requested for “quick implementation” of the agreement to open the two new crossings.
“We certainly hope Assad is serious about this,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price said. It would be “a good thing for the Syrian people,” he said, noting the Syrian regime’s previous opposition to additional humanitarian crossings.
The United Nations has been under intense pressure to get more aid and heavy equipment into Syria’s rebel-held northwest since the earthquake struck a week ago, with survivors lacking the means to dig for other survivors and the death toll mounting.
The toll in the northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue group the White Helmets, while the Syrian Health Ministry in Damascus said 1,414 people have died in government-held areas. The overall death toll in Syria stands at 3,580.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric cited difficulties due to Syria’s 12-year war.
To criticism that the UN hadn’t responded quickly enough to the quake, he said some aid is getting into the northwest, pointing to 58 trucks that arrived with aid through the Bab Al-Hawa crossing.
But he stressed that the United Nations doesn’t have heavy equipment or search and rescue teams, “so the international community as a whole needs to step up to get that aid where it is needed.”
Guterres mentioned in a commentary that with the emerging dying toll “delivering food, health, nutrition, protection, shelter, winter supplies and other life-saving supplies to all the millions of people affected is of the utmost urgency.”
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