The first UN aid convoy has entered through a reopened border crossing into rebel-held north-western Syria, devastated by last week’s earthquake
The UN said 11 lorries crossed from Turkey at Bab al-Salameh on Tuesday
Many Syrians are angry over the lack of aid for the war-torn nation especially to rebel areas, after last week’s quakes in which more than 41,000 are known to have died in Turkey and Syria
The UN and Syria’s government on Monday agreed to use two more crossings
The other one is at al-Rai, also on the Turkish border. The UN said the crossings would initially be open for three months
Two powerful earthquakes struck the south-eastern regions of neighbouring Turkey on 6 February early in the morning, when many people were asleep
Countries with friendly relations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including Russia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, began flying supplies to government-controlled areas of Syria soon after the tremor
But the opposition-controlled north-west – where some 4.1 million people were relying on humanitarian assistance to survive even before the disaster – received no aid deliveries from the UN via Turkey until Thursday
The UN blamed damage to roads leading to the Bab al-Hawa crossing, which until now was the the only land route the UN Security Council has authorised it to use
On Tuesday, the Syrian ambassador to the UN, Bassam al-Sabbagh, told the BBC’s Radio 4’s World Tonight programme that there would be be no discrimination over who was getting relief aid
And he blamed the delay in opening more aid routes on what he called the “terrorist opposition” which controls the north-west
In a separate development, on Monday night gunmen stormed a Syrian hospital caring for a baby girl who was born under the rubble of her family’s earthquake-shattered home, a hospital official was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency
The official said the attackers beat the facility’s director – but denied reports on social media that they had sought to kidnap the baby named Aya
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