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Assad opens new crossing points, yet aid deliveries are still slow to reach Syria | DW News

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Rescuers in Turkey have pulled more people from the rubble of Monday's earthquakes, but hopes were fading in Turkey and Syria that many more survivors would be found.

UN relief chief Martin Griffiths has said he expects the death toll to at least reach 50,000, after he arrived in southern Turkey on Saturday to assess the quake's damage.

With a death toll of at least 29,605 in Turkey, the disaster is already in the list of the top 10 deadliest earthquakes ever. More than 3,500 have died in Syria, where death tolls have not been updated since Friday.

Between Monday and Saturday, the area experienced more than 2,000 aftershocks, according to Turkey's AFAD disaster authority.

Volunteer rescue group Syria Civil Defense — also known has The White Helmets — has spoken out after the UN welcomed a move by Syrian President Bashar Assad to open new crossing points to allow aid from Turkey to the opposition-held northwest region.

The announcement came after a meeting in Damascus between Assad and UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths.

"This is shocking and we are at loss at how the UN is behaving," head of the opposition-run rescue group, Raed al Saleh, told Reuters news agency on Tuesday.

On Monday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed Assad's decision to open two further crossings on the border with Turkey, allowing more aid into the region following the deadly earthquakes in the region.

"I welcome the decision today by President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to open the two crossing points of Bab Al-Salam and Al Ra'ee from Türkiye to northwest Syria for an initial period of three months to allow for the timely delivery of humanitarian aid,” Guterres said in a statement.

The White Helmets have been heavily involved in assisting victims of Syria's lengthy civil war, with many of those in the region displaced because of the conflict between opposition groups and regime forces.

The Assad regime has been accused of various atrocities during the course of the bloody conflict.

In January, top chemical weapons watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said there were "reasonable grounds" to believe that Syrian government forces had used banned chemical weapons against opposition forces in 2018 in the city of Douma.

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Category
Europe
Tags
DW News, turkey, syria
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