UN continues to deliver cross-border aid into Syria

Workers transfer furnitures from a residential building that was damaged during the earthquake in Hama, central Syria, on Feb. 18, 2023. (Str/Xinhua)

The United Nations has carried out 18 inter-agency cross-border missions to Northwest Syria since the first interagency visit to Idlib on Feb. 14, said a UN spokesman.

UNITED NATIONS, March 3 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-two truckloads of aid from the World Food Programme and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) crossed into Northwest Syria from Türkiye on Friday, bringing the total of cross-border delivery to 557 trucks since Feb. 9 in the wake of massive earthquakes, said a UN spokesman.

The United Nations has carried out 18 inter-agency cross-border missions to Northwest Syria since the first interagency visit to Idlib on Feb. 14, said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, at a daily press briefing.

On Thursday, a joint delegation by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and UNICEF carried out a mission focused on gender and accountability to affected people, including a field visit to a site for internally displaced persons in Kelly Mountain and to Al-Iman hospital in Sarmada, Idlib, he said.

"Our humanitarian colleagues also tell us that over 105,000 households have reportedly been displaced following the earthquakes. Many are staying with host communities or going back to their inhabitable homes, making it very difficult to estimate the total number of displaced," said Haq.

The world body is currently supporting structural damage assessments of affected buildings to help facilitate families' return. Longer-term shelter operations are also being identified for families that cannot return to their homes due to the scope of the damage, he said.

The 400-million-U.S. dollar appeal in response to the Feb. 6 earthquakes has so far received 173 million dollars, or 43.5 percent of the funding required, he said.