The six trucks of aid from the UN did not contain some of the most urgently needed supplies, such as food. Read more at straitstimes.com.
DAMASCUS - The first shipment of international aid reached the exhausted residents of opposition-held north-western Syria on Thursday, a small triumph for the hundreds of thousands who had waited days for help to dig out people buried in the rubble, find secure lodging and obtain food.
Those territorial divisions, and a host of other political obstacles stemming from a 12-year civil war that has still not ended, posed formidable challenges and fatal delays in getting international help to those who need it most. The convoy entered Syria from Turkey, using the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, which for years has been the only passage for UN aid into areas held by opposition forces fighting the regime of Mr Bashar Assad, the country’s leader.
In Turkey, the death toll surpassed 17,500 and was also expected to rise. While waves of international search and rescue teams, using life-detecting dogs, are pouring into Turkey, local rescuers and volunteers are the only ones searching through mounds of rubble and debris in the opposition-held parts of Syria.
“We had shortages of supplies before the earthquake; now our need has only increased,” said Dr Mohamed al-Abrash, a 60-year-old surgeon in the northern city of Idlib, where he has received hundreds of wounded since Monday. Before the quake, the United Nations had been sending daily aid convoys into the opposition-held north-west.
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