Many Syrian civilians will face starvation if Damascus and armed rebel groups do not allow greater access to humanitarian convoys carrying life-saving supplies, the UN envoy to the war-ravaged country said Thursday.
There “are plenty of civilians at the moment in danger of starvation,” Staffan de Mistura told reporters, following the weekly meeting of the United Nations-backed humanitarian taskforce struggling to coordinate aid deliveries across Syria.
De Mistura’s second-in-command and head of the taskforce, Jan Egeland, meanwhile said: “Of the one million people that we have planned and have tried to reach by land in May, we’ve only so far reached 160,000,” he told reporters.
Syria’s devastating war has killed more than 280,000 people, a monitoring group said.
The toll of 282,283 includes 81,436 civilians, among them 14,040 children and 9,106 women, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Non-radical fighters accounted for 48,568 of those killed, while extremist militants — including non-Syrians — numbered 47,095.
Source : Arab News