Rebel-held northwest Syria receives the first UN aid convoy since the earthquake

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A United Nations aid convoy entered northwest Syria on Friday in the first such shipment into opposition-held territory since the deadly earthquake in February.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on its Twitter account that several trucks carrying humanitarian supplies entered northwest Syria from government-held Aleppo, in line with Security Council Resolution 2672.

The resolution, adopted in January, allows aid to be delivered to Syria for six months from the Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey.

The United Nations launched a cross-border aid operation into war-torn Syria in 2014 with four main entry points from Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. But deliveries through three transit points – Al-Ramtha (Jordan), Al-Yarubiyah (Iraq) and Bab Al-Salam (Turkey) – were closed in 2018, 2019 and 2020, respectively, due to opposition from Russia and China. Moscow, Damascus’ main backer, insists that all aid coming into Syria must pass through the government.

Human rights groups urged the concerned parties to renew Resolution 2672, which expires next month, as more than 4 million Syrians in the northwest need urgent humanitarian support.

“The scale of the multiple crises affecting northwest Syria requires re-authorization of cross-border assistance for a period of at least 12 months,” 32 Syrian and international NGOs said in a press release on Thursday.

The press release stated that “needs across the country were already at an all-time high” even before the earthquake and warned that “the subsequent disruption and reduced aid flow will prove devastating for those already at breaking point.”

Two earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria in early February, killing more than 50,000 people, including 7,259 in Syria, according to United Nations figures.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, the issue of cross-border aid quickly became politicized. President Bashar al-Assad took advantage of the flow of aid to the affected areas to renew his demands for the lifting of Western sanctions, claiming that they impede the arrival of aid.

Several countries that have imposed sanctions on the Syrian regime for alleged war crimes have agreed to a six-month waiver to allow aid to flow into Syria in the aftermath of the earthquake.

In a report on Thursday, Human Rights Watch sounded the alarm about the deteriorating conditions in northern Syria and the need for continued aid flows, and called on the United States, United Kingdom and European Union to maintain waivers related to sanctions that expire in. August. The human rights organization said that these sanctions negatively affect the Syrian population.

Although Assad agreed to open two additional border crossings with Turkey for three months in the aftermath of the earthquake, aid has been prevented from reaching areas in the northwest under the control of rebel groups, which Assad describes as terrorists.

The last UN aid convoy to reach northwest Syria was in January, a month before the earthquake.

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