Aid Begins to Flow into North West Syria

Aid has continued to flow through the newly-opened border crossings into north-western Syria from Turkey to bring disaster relief to those in opposition-controlled areas affected by the devastating February 6 earthquake.

The Bab al-Hawa border checkpoint with Turkey, north of Idlib governorate, was the only crossing open to facilitate humanitarian aid for more than a week until Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's regime finally allowed two additional crossings to open between Turkey and northwest Syria.

The Bab al-Salama and al-Rai border crossings in northern Aleppo governorate are expected to remain open for a period of three months. On February 14, the first UN aid was delivered via the Bab al-Salama crossing.

However, many working on the aid efforts in north west Syria have continued to argue that the UN could be doing more to facilitate relief efforts.

"The UN sent a single convoy from Bab al-Salama border crossing, which included 11 trucks carrying relief kits for the earthquake victims," said Hassan Tal Refaat, a media official at Bab al-Salama.

Meanwhile, he continued, 40 trucks and five ambulances belonging to the Barzani Charity Association crossed through Bab al-Salama into northern Syria coming from the Kurdistan region of Iraq, including medicines, medical supplies, tents, blankets and drinking water. The Turkish IHH organisation also sent 43 trucks via Bab al-Salama, containing flour, clothes, and various aid materials, in addition to 74 trucks belonging to several local charities and associations.

The al-Rai border crossing, north of Aleppo, had not recorded the entry of any UN convoys as of February 18, although some local charities had managed to send aid via this route.

The WHO deemed the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria and is estimated to have left some 140,000 people dead and injured to be “the largest natural disaster in a century to hit a country within its European region”.

Mazen Alloush, director of public relations and media at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, told IWPR that a UN aid convoy of 14 trucks entered Bab al-Hawa on February 18 en route to northern Syria, in addition to several other trucks belonging to local charitable organisations.

"The number of UN trucks that entered through Bab al-Hawa until today, Saturday, reached 175 distributed among ten convoys," Alloush said. "UN disaster relief did not enter the area until the fourth day [after] the devastating earthquake. The first convoy that entered on February 9 included six trucks and were scheduled within the general UN programme prior to the earthquake.”

Alloush said that 150 trucks of aid from other charities had passed through Bab al-Hawa by February 18 destined for those affected by the earthquake in north-western Syria.

A Qatari aid convoy consisted of 19 vehicles entered on February 16, containing medical materials, tents and other items. The trucks were accompanied by a delegation from the Qatar Charity organisation and a number of doctors with various specialties. They headed to the town of Jenderes and its countryside near the city of Afrin, north of Aleppo governorate.

“The number of trucks that entered from Al-Hamam border crossing in the countryside of Afrin to north of Syria, provided by King Salman Center for Relief and Humanitarian Action, reached 11 trucks," said Yasser Tarraf, coordinator of the emergency response campaign at the International Society for Victims of Wars and Disasters – Al-Ameen.

Tarraf told IWPR that these containers were offloaded from one of 11 Saudi aid planes provided by the centre, which arrived at Gaziantep airport in southern Turkey. They will be distributed in southern Turkey and north-western Syria.

"The aid includes food packages sufficient for a family of five people for a period of 15 days, and tents that have been equipped as temporary shelters, in addition to the distribution of shelter packages, which are huge containers that include household furniture and cooking equipment,” Tarraf said.

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres announced on February 14 that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad had agreed to open the two additional border crossings between Turkey and northwest Syria to allow humanitarian aid for those affected by the earthquake to enter.

Assad's decision followed a meeting with WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in the Syrian capital Damascus to discuss the response to the devastating February 6 earthquake.