Doctors Without Borders (MSF) called for an "urgent increase" in humanitarian aid in northern Syria, where 14 trucks arrived on Sunday carrying aid provided by the NGO to earthquake victims.
The convoy arrived Sunday morning via the al-Hammam border post from Turkey, according to MSF and an AFP correspondent on the spot.
"
This first convoy is carrying 1,296 tents for displaced people and families (of 5 or more people) left 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.
Read alsoEarthquake in Turkey and Syria: in the ruins of Antioch, the complaint of the victims awaiting help
More than 44,000 people died after the earthquake that devastated southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6, including 3,688 in this country already ravaged by war.
After the earthquake, NGOs and opposition activists criticized the slowness of the arrival of UN aid in the rebel areas in the northwest of the country, where the population was already living in difficult conditions.
“
An urgent increase in the volume of supplies is needed to respond to the scale of the humanitarian crisis
,” MSF warned on Sunday.
"
Aid is arriving in dribs and drabs, in negligible quantities
", with a volume which "
barely reaches that before the disaster
", lamented Hakim Khaldi, MSF's head of mission in Syria.
Before the earthquake, almost all the crucial aid for more than 4 million people living in the rebel areas of northwestern Syria was channeled via Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa border post, the only point of passage guaranteed by a Security Council resolution on the cross-border passage of UN aid without the approval of Damascus.
Syria has agreed that two new cross-border crossings with Turkey will be used for three months by convoys carrying aid to rebel areas.
MSF specifies that its delivery was organized “
outside the United Nations cross-border humanitarian mechanism
”, as NGOs are not required to comply with it, unlike UN agencies.
