By Betul Yuruk
GENEVA (AA) – The United Nations’ Syria envoy said Thursday they have made progress, saying a psychological barrier was broken by reaching Syria’s besieged areas of Daraya and Douma after several very bad weeks for humanitarian access.
Speaking at a press conference after a meeting of an international humanitarian task force for Syria, envoy Jan Egeland said humanitarian convoys were ready to reach 50,000 people in al-Waer, a suburb of Syria’s besieged town of Homs, and the Aleppo’s northwestern district of Afrin, and 25,000 people in the town of Kafr Batna in the Rif Dimashq province’s Eastern Ghouta area.
Egeland also said that the UN hopes to reach two other besieged Syrian towns, Zamalka and Arbin, on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, in the next few days.
More than 590,000 people have been living under siege in 18 areas with no relief, Egeland stressed.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests – which erupted as part of the “Arab Spring” uprisings – with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN.
The Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, put the death toll from the six-year conflict at more than 470,000 people.
*Anadolu Agency correspondent Sibel Ugurlu contributed to this report from Ankara
