Status: 02/15/2023 10:24 a.m
Help for Syria is still difficult. The first UN aid convoy arrived Tuesday – more than a week after the quake. The head of the US emergency aid agency, Power, sees the amount of aid on site at a “critically low level”.
Samantha Power, head of the US Agency for Development Cooperation and Emergency Relief (USAID), sees an urgent need for help for the earthquake victims in Syria. “Despite the arrival of 90 aid vans, the amount of humanitarian funds in warehouses in Syria is falling to a critically low level,” she wrote on Twitter. According to the latest estimates, 350,000 people were displaced by the disaster.
The United States wants to provide 85 million dollars (about 79 million euros) for Syria and Turkey – including for food, shelter, medicine and family care. Regardless of the earthquake, the US is the largest donor to Syria, with $15.7 billion in humanitarian aid since the civil war began in 2011.
Aid to Syria is also made more difficult by the fact that only one border crossing between Syria and Turkey has been open so far, the Bab al-Hawa crossing. Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad recently opened two more border crossings into Turkey: Bab al-Salam and Al-Ra’ee. Both should remain open for three months.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a first UN aid convoy with eleven trucks passed the Bab al-Salam border crossing on Tuesday. Accordingly, they had basic relief supplies such as mattresses, blankets, carpets and material for temporary accommodation on board.
There is a lack of food, medicine and tents
The release of the other border crossings is good news, Power wrote. “But a UN Security Council resolution remains the best way to ensure aid can continue to flow in a reliable manner, even after the cameras are gone.”
Better access to the northwest is needed, where the need for aid was enormous due to the “appalling destruction” even before the earthquake. The people urgently need food, medicine and tents for shelter.
A good week after the earthquake disaster, the number of dead on Tuesday evening was more than 40,000. 5,900 deaths were recently reported from Syria. In Turkey, the number is 35,418, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, according to the state news agency Anadolu. More than 13,000 injured are being treated in hospitals, around 1.6 million people are living in emergency shelters, and 600,000 people have been evacuated or left the region on their own.