Aid convoys to seven besieged locations in Syria have been loaded with food and medicine to relieve starving civilians and are awaiting instructions to depart for their destinations.
The convoys, which were announced by UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, on Tuesday night, are expected to head to the towns of Madaya and Zabadani, whose citizens have been starving to death under a siege imposed by forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad; as well as Fua and Kefraya, which are besieged by rebels. Other convoys are heading to the Damascus suburbs of Moadamiyah and Kafr Batna in Ghouta, which are also besieged by the regime.
UN officials are also meeting on Wednesday to decide whether to airdrop supplies in Deir ez-Zor, where hundreds of thousands of people are under siege by Islamic State.
De Mistura is expected to accompany one of the aid convoys. “Everybody is ready and on standby,” one humanitarian official told the Guardian.
The fate of the convoys was called into question after the Syrian foreign ministry responded to De Mistura’s statement. The UN envoy said the provision of aid, part of an agreement reached by major powers meeting in Munich last week, was a test of the Syrian government’s seriousness.
“The Syrian government does not allow neither UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, nor anybody else to talk about testing Syria’s seriousness in any matter” the foreign ministry said in a statement published by the state news agency Sana. “Rather, the Syrian government is now in need to test the credibility of the UN special envoy, whose statements since the beginning of his mission to the mass media outlets, completely contradict to what happened in joint meetings with the Syrian government.”
“The Syrian Arab Republic, in this regard, reaffirms the government’s commitment to deliver humanitarian aid to the people living in areas besieged by terrorists, and this does not have any relation to Geneva, Munich or Vienna meetings, or any other party,” the statement said. “We don’t wait for anyone to remind us of our duties towards our people.” The Syrian government refers to all opposition fighters as terrorists. Humanitarian agencies believe that more than a million people are living under siege in Syria in dozens of locations, the vast majority of which are sieges imposed by the regime.
Turkey said on Wednesday that it wanted to secure a strip of territory 10km (6 miles) deep on the Syrian side of its border, including the town of Azaz, to prevent attempts to “change the demographic structure” of the area, the deputy prime minister, Yalçın Akdoğan, said in an interview.
Syrian government forces backed by Russian air strikes have advanced towards the Turkish border in a major offensive in recent weeks. Kurdish militia fighters, regarded by Ankara as hostile insurgents, have taken advantage of the violence to seize territory from Syrian rebels.
Turkey has accused the Kurdish militia of pursuing “demographic change” in northern Syria by forcibly displacing Turkmen and Arab communities. Ankara ultimately fears the creation of an independent Kurdish state occupying contiguous territories currently belonging to Iraq, Syria and Turkey.
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