The UN Secretary General on Tuesday launched an emergency appeal for donations for the victims of the earthquake in Syria. “Today, I am announcing that the United Nations is launching a humanitarian appeal for $397 million for the populations affected by the earthquake that devastated Syria. This will cover a period of three months," Antonio Guterres told reporters, adding that an equivalent appeal for Turkey was in preparation. The current death toll was close to 40,000 on Wednesday.
He called on all member states to "fully and without delay fund" this appeal for donations, to guarantee "humanitarian aid that almost 5 million Syrians desperately need, including shelter, medical care, food".
"The needs are immense" and "we all know that life-saving aid is not coming in at the speed and scale needed," the Secretary-General insisted. A week after the devastating earthquakes, millions of people across the region are struggling to survive, homeless and facing freezing temperatures. »
Faced with this unprecedented situation, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed on Monday to open two cross-border crossing points between Turkey and rebel areas in northwestern Syria, while the UN could so far pass through a single border crossing under a UN Security Council resolution.
On Tuesday, US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken "stressed the need for the Assad regime to fulfill its commitment" regarding the Bab al-Salama and Al-Rai points, "including through an authorization from the Council of security, if needed,” during a call with Antonio Guterres, according to a State Department statement.
"The human suffering caused by this epic natural disaster must not be further compounded by human-made barriers - access, funding, supply," the UN secretary-general said earlier, calling on again that aid can be delivered "by all roads, without any restrictions".
If UN convoys have been passing through the Bab al-Hawa cross-border crossing since Thursday, and a first convoy took one of the two new crossing points on Tuesday, the UN had indicated on Monday that it had not yet been able to organize a convoy between the front lines in Syria.
As of Tuesday evening, the death toll from the earthquake stood at 39,106 – 35,418 officially in southern Turkey, while authorities counted 3,688 in Syria. On Sunday, the UN said it expected those numbers to increase significantly.
"We are witnessing the worst natural disaster in the WHO Europe region in a century and we are still measuring its magnitude," said a World Health Organization official.
