Syria faces food aid cut-off
HUNDREDS of thousands of civilians could be cut off from food supplies if Syrian government forces encircle rebel-held parts of Aleppo, the UN said yesterday, warning of a massive new flight of refugees.
Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air strikes and Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, have launched a major offensive in the countryside around Aleppo, which has been divided between government and rebel control for years.
The assault to surround Aleppo, once Syria’s biggest city with 2million people, amounts to one of the most important shifts of momentum in the five-year civil war that has killed 250 000 people and already driven 11 million from their homes.
The UN is worried that the government advance could cut off the last link for civilians in rebel-held parts of Aleppo with the main Turkish border crossing, which has long served as the lifeline for insurgentcontrolled territory. “It would leave up to 300 000 people, still residing in the city, cut off from humanitarian aid unless crossline access could be negotiated,” the UN Office for Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in an urgent bulletin.
If government advances around the city continue, it said, “local councils in the city estimate that some 100 000150 000 civilians may flee”.
Turkey, already home to 2.5 million Syrians, the world’s biggest refugee population, has so far kept its frontier closed to the latest wave of displaced, making it more difficult to reach them with urgently needed aid. The UN urged Ankara on Tuesday to open the border and has called on other countries to assist Turkey with aid.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that about 70 000 Syrian refugees could reach the Turkish border if the military campaign continued unabated, and Turkey would not shut its gates to them.
The UN World Food Programme said it had begun food distribution in the Syrian town of Azaz near the Turkish border for the new wave of displaced people. “The situation is quite volatile and fluid in northern Aleppo, with families on the move seeking safety,” said Jakob Kern, the WFP’s country director in Syria.
The Russian-backed government assault around Aleppo, as well as advances further south, helped torpedo the first peace talks for nearly two years, which collapsed last week before they got under way in earnest.
Moscow turned the momentum in the war in favour of its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, when it joined the conflict four months ago with a campaign of air strikes against his enemies, many of whom are supported by Arab states, Turkey and the West. German chancellor Angela Merkel accused Russia this week of bombing civilians, against a UN Security Council resolution Moscow signed up to in December. Russia says it is targeting only Islamist militants.
The complex multi-sided civil war has drawn in outside powers, with the US leading a separate campaign of air strikes against Islamic State militants who control eastern Syria and northern Iraq. – Reuters AACHEN: A couple have gone on trial in Germany for allegedly stabbing to death a man they believed to be a paedophile after he made contact with their 12-year-old daughter over the social network site, Facebook.
The couple are accused of extortion and murdering the 29-year-old man, identified as Christian L, in August last year.
Prosecutors in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia believe the pair decided to kill the man after he wrote on their daughter’s Facebook page that he wanted to meet her.
Prosecutors believe the couple had suspected that he wanted more from the contact with their daughter.
With the help of a friend, the couple lured Christian L to a quiet back road and then stabbed him, according to prosecutors.
Under Germany’s strict privacy laws, the names of those involved in court cases are often not published in full.
The couple believed Christian L wanted contact with a child and had photos of their daughter on his cellphone, prosecutors said.
The pair had initially made a police complaint against Christian L, but investigators considered the charges against him to be unfounded and the case was dropped.
However, the couple continued to maintain that he was a child molester.
Along with the couple’s friend, another co-defendant, who was looking after the couple’s children at the time, has been charged – dpa