UN Plans Food Airdrops In Daesh-Besieged Syria Areas

Geneva, 11  Jumadal Awwal 1437/19 February 2016 (MINA) –  The United Nations plans to make airdrops of food aid to 200,000 people besieged by Daesh terrorists in Syria’s Deir al-Zor, a senior adviser of UN Special Envoy for Syria said Thursday.

The airdrop was discussed during the second meeting of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) Task Force on Humanitarian Access in Syria in Geneva on Thursday, Anadolu Agency quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

The meeting was co-chaired by United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura in a video from Damascus and Jan Egeland, senior adviser to the special envoy.

“In last 24 hours, 114 big trucks delivered life-saving humanitarian supplies to 80,000 people in five besieged areas. That is the beginning of the task,” Egeland said.

“We will also hope then to have a process of reaching poor people inside of Deir al-Zor which has been besieged by Daesh. That can only be done by airdrops and World Food Program has now concrete plan of doing so,” he added.

He said that reaching over 480,000 people in besieged areas was the first step. “The main task is to reach all of the millions [4.6 million Syrians] in hard-to-reach areas and Aleppo is only one of the hard-to-reach areas where we need to get access and we need to get access now,” he said.

“There are about 18 besieged areas. We hope to able to reach remaining areas in the next days. If we reach Deir al-Zor, there are 200,000 people,” he said.

Syria has remained locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the regime of President Bashar al-Assad cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, more than 250,000 people have been killed across the country and more than 10 million displaced, according to UN figures. (T/P010/R07)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)