Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called for an “urgent increase” in humanitarian aid in northern Syria, where 14 trucks loaded with NGO relief supplies for earthquake victims arrived on Sunday.
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According to MSF and an AFP correspondent on the ground, the convoy arrived from Turkey via the al-Hammam border post on Sunday morning.
“This first convoy is transporting 1,296 tents for displaced people and families (of 5 or more people) made homeless by the earthquake, as well as 1,296 winter kits to insulate the tents from the cold,” the NGO said in a statement.
“Other MSF convoys should follow quickly to deliver medical and non-medical supplies,” she added.
More than 44,000 people died after the earthquake that devastated southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6, including 3,688 in that already war-ravaged country.
After the earthquake, NGOs and members of the opposition criticized the slow arrival of UN aid in the rebel-held areas in the northwest of the country, where the population was already living in difficult conditions.
“An urgent increase in the volume of care is needed to respond to the scale of the humanitarian crisis,” MSF warned on Sunday.
“Aid comes in dribbles and dribbles, in negligible amounts,” with volumes “barely approaching pre-disaster levels,” lamented Hakim Khaldi, MSF’s Syria operations manager.
Before the earthquake, almost all vital aid to more than 4 million people living in rebel-held areas of north-west Syria was channeled through Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, the only point of passage permitted by a Security Council resolution regarding the cross is guaranteed -Border crossing of aid supplies from the United Nations without the consent of Damascus.
Syria has agreed that two new border crossings with Turkey will be used by aid convoys to rebel-held areas for three months.
MSF says the delivery was organized “outside the United Nations Cross-Border Humanitarian Mechanism” as NGOs, unlike UN organisations, are not required to comply.
Syria has been plagued by a civil war since 2011, sparked by the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations, which has left half a million dead, millions displaced and the country fragmented.