WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, centre, accompanied by Syrian Health Minister Hassan al-Ghabash, centre left, visits an area in the northern city of Aleppo on February 11, 2023. The city and the Syria-Türkiye border region where severely affected by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake on February 6 and after shocks in the past three weeks. Picture: AFP
BAB AL-HAWA - World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged the international community on Wednesday to help earthquake-hit north-west Syria, on his first-ever visit to rebel-held areas of the war-ravaged country.
"The people of north-west Syria need the assistance of the international community to recover and rebuild," Tedros told reporters after entering from neighbouring Türkiye via the Bab al-Hawa border crossing.
"I call on the international community, governments, philanthropists, individuals, to dig deep," added Tedros, the highest-ranking United Nations official to visit the rebel-held area since civil war broke out almost 12 years ago.
The WHO chief had already travelled to government-controlled Aleppo and Damascus the same week as the February 6 disaster that killed more than 50,000 people in Türkiye and Syria.
On Wednesday, Tedros visited several hospitals and a shelter near the Turkish border for people displaced by the disaster, an AFP correspondent said.
Turkish-backed officials in Syria have put the death toll in rebel-held areas at 4,537, while the Syrian government has said 1,414 people were killed in areas under its control.
The UN has launched a $397-million appeal to help quake victims in Syria, but Tedros warned that "we are not getting as much as what is needed for this emergency".
"Even before the earthquake, needs were increasing while international aid was decreasing," Tedros said.
"We must not close our eyes or turn our backs on the Syrian people."
In the aftermath of the quake, activists and emergency teams in the rebel-held north-west had decried the UN's slow response, contrasting it with the plane loads of humanitarian aid that have been delivered to government-controlled airports.
By noon on Wednesday, at least 258 aircraft laden with aid had reached regime-controlled areas, 129 of them from the United Arab Emirates, transport ministry official Suleiman Khalil said.
United Nations relief chief Martin Griffiths admitted on February 12 that the organisation had "so far failed the people in north-west Syria".
The UN said at least 420 trucks loaded with UN aid have now crossed into the rebel-held pocket since the tragedy.
The quake came nearly 12 years into Syria's civil war which devastated swathes of the country, killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions more.
More than four million people live in areas outside government control in Syria's north and north-west, 90% of whom depend on aid to survive.
The first UN aid convoy crossed into the area on February 9 – three days after the 7.8-magnitude quake struck – and carried tents and other relief for 5,000. That convoy had been expected before the earthquake.
The UN largely delivers relief to Syria's north-west via neighbouring Türkiye through the Bab al-Hawa crossing -- the only way for aid to enter without Damascus's permission.
The crossing is located in the Idlib region, which UN officials rarely visit and is controlled by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
The WHO chief said on February 12 that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had expressed openness to more border crossings for aid to be brought to quake victims in the rebel-held north-west.
On February 13, the UN said Damascus had allowed it to also use two other crossings in areas outside regime control – Bab al-Salama and Al-Rai – for three months.
An AFP correspondent said a new aid convoy entered via Bab al-Salama on Wednesday.
The first UN delegation to visit rebel-held north-western Syria after the earthquake crossed from Türkiye on February 14.
It comprised deputy regional humanitarian co-ordinator David Carden and Sanjana Quazi, who heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Türkiye, and was largely an assessment mission.
Meanwhile, landmines planted by jihadists killed 10 civilians in central Syria on Monday, state media reported, in the latest in a wave of deadly incidents involving truffle hunters.
"Nine citizens were killed and two others injured" when a landmine left by Islamic State (IS) group militants blew up, the official Sana news agency said.
It said the victims had been "on the hunt for truffles in the eastern countryside of al-Salamiyah" in Hama province.
Sana later reported said that another mine left by IS exploded in the same area, "killing one citizen and injuring 10 others".
At least 112 people, 92 of them civilians, have been killed while hunting for the desert delicacy, either in IS attacks or landmine blasts, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
Many Syrians forage for desert truffles, which are in season from February to April, to sell at high prices and help make ends meet in the war-torn country.
On February 18, at least 68 truffle hunters in a desert area of neighbouring Homs province were killed in a suspected IS attack, said the Observatory, a Britain-based monitor with a wide network of sources inside Syria.
The Observatory said IS, which held sway in Hama province's eastern countryside from 2014 to 2017, was taking advantage of the annual truffle harvest to stage attacks in remote areas.
After the jihadists lost the last territory they controlled following a military onslaught backed by a US-led coalition in March 2019, IS remnants in Syria mostly retreated into desert hideouts in the east.
Explosives left in fields, along roads or even in buildings by all sides in Syria's 12-year conflict have killed hundreds of civilians and wounded thousands more, the Observatory says.
Across Syria, more than 10 million people live in areas contaminated by explosive hazards, the UN has said.
AFP