The Ambassador of the United States of America to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, asked this Thursday maintaining the last cross-border aid delivery access to northern Syriathreatened with closure by Moscow.
The authorization of this last cross-border crossing, andm effective since 2014, expires on July 10 and will require a Security Council vote in early July, which Russia, supporter of the Damascus regime, threatens to veto.
“We must extend this crossing point. We must continue to provide this aid,” said Thomas-Greenfield, speaking from a United Nations logistics center in Reyhanli, three kilometers from the Turkish-Syrian border.
Around 10,000 truckloads of humanitarian aid passed through this place last year on his way to the Idlib region, the last ‘jihadist’ stronghold in Syria, where some three million people live in precarious conditions.
For international observers, Moscow is trying to make maintaining that humanitarian access a bargaining chip in the context of the war in Ukraine.
“We know that the situation is terrible, that people are suffering,” said the US ambassador, pointing out that the closure of cross-border access “will increase the number of displaced people” and defending the authorization for its maintenance.
The authorization, which Moscow had already threatened to oppose last year, allows sending humanitarian aid from Turkey -food, medicine, blankets, mattresses and even vaccines against Covid-19- to Syriansthrough the Bab al-Hawa entry point in northwestern Syria.
On May 20, Russia reported, through its deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyanskiy, that it sees “no reason to maintain this device”, claiming that it “violates the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria”.
More than 80% of the population of northwest Syria depend on this device for their survival.according to the UN.
As of 2020, only the Bab al-Hawa crossing remained open, with three others excluded from the scope of the UN resolution due to Russian opposition.
Source: Observadora
