BEIRUT - The flow of critical UN aid from Türkiye to north-west Syria has temporarily halted due to damage to roads and other logistical issues related to the deadly earthquake that struck the two countries on Monday, a United Nations spokesperson said.
Even before the quake struck in the early hours of Monday, the UN estimated that more than four million people in north-west Syria, many displaced by the war and living in camps, depended on cross-border aid.
Those needs have now increased, a top UN aid official said, making the hundreds of trucks worth of food, medical and other assistance that enter Syria via Türkiye each month all the more vital.
"Some roads are broken, some are inaccessible. There are logistical issues that need to be worked through," MadeviSun-Suon, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, said.
"We don't have a clear picture of when it will resume," she said.
With a death toll in Syria already topping 1,600, rescue workers from across the frozen front lines of the country's 12-year civil war have said that hundreds more people likely remain under the rubble.
Sun-Suon said aid workers were also struggling with limited access to water and power as well as looking for their own colleagues and loved ones.
The aid already positioned within the north-west will likely be rapidly depleted, officials said.
"We have heard there are some supplies in the system for the next three to five days however our concern is that these will be exhausted rapidly," Kieren Barnes, country director for MercyCorps Syria, said.
"We will need to significantly increase resources for north-west Syria and ensure supply lines are clear for us to respond."
Meanwhile, Syria's Red Crescent said it was ready to deliver relief aid to all the country's regions, including the opposition-held areas and urged the UN, which has long co-ordinated the aid and relief operations in the opposition-held areas, to facilitate that.
Reuters