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Food aid reaches besieged Damascus suburb of Darayya Food aid reaches besieged Darayya for first time since 2012
(about 1 hour later)
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent says it has delivered food aid to Darayya for the first time since the suburb of Damascus came under siege in 2012. Food aid has been delivered to the Damascus suburb of Darayya for the first time since it came under siege in 2012, a development that the UN and the World Food Programme hope will presage a new willingness by the Syrian government to allow aid delivery to besieged towns.
The delivery was coordinated with the UN and took place shortly before midnight on Thursday, it said. Bashar al-Assad’s government has frequently promised to allow aid delivery but then in practice refused to do so. In talks this week the government told the UN it was willing to allow access to 15 of the 19 besieged areas. There has been scepticism about the credibility of the promise and doubt about the degree of pressure being put on the Syrian government by Russia.
In a statement posted on its Facebook page, it said it also delivered medical supplies. The rebel-held suburb of Darayya, south-west of the Syrian capital, has been under siege since November 2012 and has witnessed some of the worst bombardment of the civil war, now in its sixth year. The UN estimates that 4,000-8,000 people live in Darayya.
The government allowed medical supplies into the suburb for the first time in nearly four years a week ago. The delivery of food supplies late on Thursday night came a week after a joint convoy of the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Syrian Arab Red Crescent reached Darayya and delivered medicines, vaccines, baby formula and “nutritional items for children”– but no food.
The UN estimates that between 4,000 and 8,000 people live in Darayya, which has been subject to a crippling government blockade since residents expelled security forces in the early stages of the 2011 uprising against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. The food was delivered by the Red Crescent, and it is thought the convoy carried enough aid to feed 2,400 people for one month.
A WFP official said he had met some beneficiaries of the food aid, as well as community leaders. “The supply of the very basic commodities is very challenging, so as a consequence the prices of the commodities themselves are very high whenever they are available,” he said.
“As a result most families are having to do with one meal, which is not complete as a meal, per day in order to be able to get by.”
Among those joining the convoy into Darayya were the UN humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, and Khawla Mattar, a spokeswoman for the UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, according to photographs posted by local activists.
The convoy is critical for the UN in its efforts to assuage opposition activists that it is worth their while trying to restart stalled peace talks with the Syrian government. Senior officials on the high negotiating committee, the Syrian opposition umbrella negotiating body, have resigned in despair at the lack of progress in the talks, breaches of the ceasefire and the lack of humanitarian access.
Western diplomats will hope the delivery of aid is a sign that Russia may be willing to put pressure on the Assad government not just about aid, but also a more flexible stance in the peace talks. Previous western hopes about Russian intentions have tended to be dashed.
The International Syria Support Group, jointly chaired by the US and Russia, agreed at a meeting on 17 May that if aid was not delivered by 1 June, it would turn to the use of airdrops and helicopter delivery to try to get aid to those bereft of food.
The UN has always airdrops as a last resort and is using the threat of them as a form of leverage over the Russians and the Syrians, but the credibility of the threat was lessened when it admitted it could not envisage delivering aid by air without the permission of the Syrian government.