UN: Convoy rolls into Damascus suburbs with aid for 40,000
GENEVA (Reuters) – A convoy from the UN and Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered towns in the besieged Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta on Monday, bringing aid to 40,000 people for the first time since June 2016, the world body said.
A tightening siege by government forces has pushed people to the verge of famine in the eastern suburbs, residents and aid workers said last week, bringing desperation to the only major rebel enclave near the Syrian capital.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Twitter the convoy had entered Kafra Batna and Saqba.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said in a separate tweet that the interagency convoy had 49 trucks.
They carried food, nutrition and health items for 40,000 people in need, OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said. “The last time we reached these two locations was in June 2016,” he said.
Technical specialists were on board to assess needs in the towns in order to plan a further humanitarian response, he said.
“More aid to complement today’s delivery is planned in the coming days,” Laerke added.
At least 1,200 children in eastern Ghouta suffer from malnutrition, with 1,500 others at risk, a spokeswoman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF said last week.
Bettina Luescher, spokeswoman of the UN World Food Program, said the convoy carried nutrition supplies for 16,000 children.
Food, fuel and medicine once traveled across front lines into the suburbs through a network of underground tunnels. But early this year, an army offensive nearby cut smuggling routes that provided a lifeline for around 300,000 people in the enclave east of the capital.