Quake imperils cross-border aid to Syria: UN
The sole border crossing used to shuttle life-saving aid from Turkey into conflict-ravaged Syria has seen its operations disrupted by the deadly earthquake that struck the two countries, the UN said Tuesday.
More than 5,400 people were killed when the 7.8-magnitude quake and its reverberations struck Turkey and Syria on Monday.
Jens Laerke, OCHA’s spokesperson, told reporters in Geneva, “The cross-border operation has itself been impacted.”
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, stated that the Bab al-Hawa crossing is “actually intact.”
Dujarric stated, “However, the road that is leading to the crossing has been damaged, which has temporarily disrupted our ability to fully utilize it.”
In a region that has been beset by war, insurgency, refugee crises, and a recent cholera outbreak, disaster agencies reported that several thousand buildings had been destroyed.
How aid will get to all those in need in Syria, which has been devastated by more than a decade of civil war, has raised particular concerns.
Through a cross-border mechanism established in 2014 by a UN Security Council resolution, humanitarian aid typically reaches rebel-held areas through Turkey.
However, Damascus and Moscow, its ally, argue that it is a violation of Syrian sovereignty.
The number of crossing points has been reduced from four to one over time as a result of pressure from Russia and China.
Additionally, significant infrastructure damage has been sustained in the vicinity of that one border crossing, and the catastrophe has also affected aid workers on the ground.
“Every effort is being made to overcome these logistical hurdles, which are created by the earthquake,” Laerke stated. “Lives are at stake.”
According to Laerke, “there is a window of about seven days” when survivors are typically found, and it was essential to dispatch teams to those in immediate need as soon as possible.
He stated, “It is essential that everyone sees it as a humanitarian crisis where lives are at risk.”
Don’t politicize this, please. Let’s distribute the aid to those who so desperately require it.
He stated that the United Nations would employ “any and all means to get to people, including the cross-border operation and the cross-line operation from within Syria.”
However, Laerke noted that road access was difficult and that the earthquake had affected the UN’s “own staff, our own contracting partners, our truck drivers with whom we work, our national staff.”
He acknowledged, “They’re looking for their families in the rubble… That has had an immediate impact on that operation.”
He stated that partners delivering aid in northwestern Syria at the same time claimed to be “operational and they are asking for supplies, as well as funding.”
He warned, however, that the specific Syria cross-border humanitarian fund is depleted at this time.
