Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 9th Feb. UN Resident Coordinator for Syria El-Mostafa Benlamlih on Wednesday briefed the members of the media in New York via video link said that the fresh snowfall in Syria has compounded the desperate situation faced by millions of people in the five governorates whose lives have been shattered by the earthquake disaster.
“We have already a very vulnerable situation; people (are) already vulnerable, not capable of taking care of themselves…and all of a sudden comes this,” said El-Mostafa Benlamlih.
“All the achievements we had before, anybody who had a small business has lost that business, anybody who could go to school cannot go to school, women who could go to protection centres cannot go to protection centres.
Mr. Benlamlih warned that the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance – currently 15.3 million – will have to be revised upwards.
He told that 10.9 million people in Syria had been affected by the catastrophe in the northwestern governorates of Hama, Latakia, Idlib, Aleppo and Tartus.
Some 100,000 people are now believed to be homeless in Aleppo alone he stated as he described how just 30,000 of that number had found shelter in schools and mosques.
“Those are the lucky ones,” he said.
Mr. Benlamlih stressed that 70,000 “have snow, they have cold and they are living in a terrible situation”.
He confirmed that roads have been damaged that lead to the only permitted cross-border aid route into northwest Syria from Türkiye at Bab al-Hawa.
He was hopeful that the crossing point would reopen on Thursday.
“Luckily we’re hearing today that the road is opening we’re hoping that tomorrow, we will be able to deliver something across the border,” he said.
Mr. Benlamlih stressed that UN aid teams and partners had started working “from the first hour of the disaster” by using prepositioned stocks of food, dignity and medical kits.
UN Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis, Muhannad Hadi cited the urgent need to get aid to those who need it.
“Our objective is to reach the people, for us, cross-border and cross-line are just modalities complementing each other,” he said.
“The most important thing is that we reach people in this time, people who are desperate for help in this very desperate situation. We see images on TV, children stranded in very harsh cold winter, snowing, it’s really heartbreaking.”
He said the situation remains dire and even more precarious in Syria.
UN aid coordination office OCHA noted that UN staff and contractors working in Gaziantep have been directly impacted by the disaster, with some looking for their families in the rubble.
Over 50 emergency response and search-and-rescue teams have been deployed to the region and OCHA has reported that $25 million in emergency funding has been released by the UN to support the response.
WFP tweeted that trucks in Türkiye had departed from its warehouses in Ankara carrying food for 17,000 people impacted who are seeking shelter in Osmaniye Cevdetiye camp.
It said in a press release published later on Wednesday that it planned to reach half a million people in both countries with much needed food assistance.
“As of Wednesday morning, WFP had reached nearly 64,000 people in urgent need of food assistance, providing ready-to-eat food rations, family food packages and hot meals. The food being distributed requires no cooking and provides immediate relief for families whose precarious position is made worse by freezing temperatures”, the agency reported.
UN agencies said that in southeast Türkiye the emergency food agency is coordinating with authorities to provide family food packages to people in temporary camps. The camps already house around 44,000 Syrians under temporary protection and now include newly displaced Turkish nationals.
WFP plans to provide family food packages to Turkish nationals for up to two weeks while services stabilize where there is no longer access to regular supermarkets
WFP and its local partners have delivered ready-to-eat rations and daily hot meals to 38,000 affected people in shelters in Syria.
WFP Regional Director for the wider region, Corinne Fleischer said “The world woke up to devastating news on Monday. A region plagued by years of compounding crises, faces yet another one, with unimaginable loss and destruction. Immediate relief cannot be delayed,”.
“WFP’s strong footprint in both countries enabled us to immediately mobilize our staff, logistics capacity and partners to respond to people’s most immediate food needs.”
The agency said that in northwest Syria, the quakes have complicated an acute humanitarian crisis in which 4.1 million people or 90 per cent of the population depend on humanitarian assistance.
Some 3 million people have been displaced by conflict more than once.
WFP has enough ready-to-eat food inside northwest Syria to assist 125,000 people and is providing this to local partners, it said.
The agency stressed that it “mourns all the lives lost in this tragedy”, which sadly includes at least one of its own staff members.
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