The 7.8-magnitude quake killed more than 44,000 people in Turkey and Syria, including 3,600 in Syria, piling more misery on a population who activists say has been abandoned by the world in the midst of tragedy.
- How does UN aid reach the northwest? -
More than four million people live in areas outside government control in Syria's north and northwest, 90 per cent of whom depend on aid to survive.
Yet the first UN aid convoy crossed into the area on February 9 -- three days after the quake struck -- and carried tents and other relief for 5,000 that had been expected before the earthquake.
The UN largely delivers relief to Syria's northwest via neighbouring Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing -- the only way for aid to enter without Damascus' permission.
The number of UN-approved crossings has shrunk from four in 2014 after years of pressure from regime allies China and Russia at the UN Security Council.
With the road leading to Bab al-Hawa briefly damaged after the quake and aid workers in the devastated areas also affected, international pressure mounted for relief to pour in.
On February 13, the United Nations said Damascus had allowed it to also use Bab al-Salama and Al-Rai crossings for three months.
Turkish-backed rebels operate the two crossings in the northern Aleppo province, while the jihadist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group controls Bab al-Hawa in the Idlib region.
Despite the additional crossings, relief workers say the UN aid deliveries remain insufficient.
Since the quake struck, the UN said it sent nearly 200 trucks to northwest Syria -- less than the weekly average of 145 recorded in 2022 according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
Syria's White Helmets rescue group which operates in rebel-held areas have slammed the UN's slow response, calling it a "crime".
On February 12, UN relief chief Martin Griffiths acknowledged the body had "failed the people of northwest Syria".
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said Monday that 10 aid trucks had crossed at the Al-Rai border point.
"This is the first UN convoy through this border crossing since the Government of Syria agreed to its use for aid deliveries, which now brings us to three fully operating border crossings for the United Nations."
- How do aid groups send relief? -
International aid groups are not bound by the UN's cross-border aid mechanism and can truck aid through other crossings with Turkey's approval.
International organisations also provide funding to aid groups in the northwest to "buy what they need either from the local market or from Turkey through commercial crossings", said Racha Nasreddine of ActionAid.
But with millions made homeless by the quake, stocks of blankets, food and tents were quickly depleted.
Although donations poured in, local groups struggled to secure necessities as prices of basic goods shot up at home while roads leading to Turkey were damaged in the tremor, she said.
And while planeloads of foreign aid flooded regime-held areas after the quake, Syria's northwest was largely left to fend for itself.
- Who is blocking relief to the northwest? -
Although the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad does not control crossing points with Turkey, the United Nations sought its approval to use them.
Syria and its ally Russia have long insisted that all relief pass through regime-controlled areas and Moscow has threatened to veto the UN cross-border mechanism at past security council meetings.
Many aid groups say they do not trust Syrian authorities to dispatch aid to areas under rival control.
On February 10, the Assad regime said it approved the delivery of humanitarian aid directly from government-held territory to rebel areas.
But the head of the jihadist HTS group, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, has said he would refuse any aid crossing going that route.
Nearly three million people, most of whom have been displaced by Syria's war, live in the Idlib region under HTS control, while 1.1 million reside in areas of northern Aleppo held by Turkish proxies.
Turkish troops and about 30 Ankara-backed groups control border areas administered by local councils affiliated with nearby Turkish governorates.
Rival Kurdish authorities that rule swathes of the northeast sent 30 fuel tankers to northern Aleppo, but the convoy had to turn back after failing to get the greenlight to cross.
Syria's Assad visits Oman after quake, in first since war
Muscat (AFP) Feb 20, 2023 -
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad visited Oman on Monday, his first official trip to the Gulf country in more than a decade of civil war at home, the Omani foreign ministry said.
The one-day trip to meet with Sultan Haitham bin Tareq came two weeks after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, killing more than 44,000 people across both countries.
The February 6 quake sparked Arab outreach to the internationally-isolated Assad government, which was expelled from the Arab League after war broke out in 2011.
Sultan Haitham and Assad "held official talks" at the royal palace in Muscat, Oman's foreign ministry said in a statement.
The Omani ruler "extended anew his condolences and sincere sympathy to.... the president and to the brotherly Syrian people for the victims of the devastating earthquake", it added.
The two leaders discussed regional issues and bilateral ties before holding a "private meeting", the statement said without elaborating.
Unlike other Arab Gulf states, Oman never severed diplomatic ties with Damascus.
In Muscat, Assad praised Oman's "balanced policies" over the years, the Syrian presidency said in a statement.
"The region is now more in need of Oman's role... to strengthen ties between Arab states on the basis on mutual respect," the statement quoted Assad as saying.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain both restored relations with Assad's government in 2018.
Assad visited the UAE last year in his first trip to an Arab state since the war began, followed only by Monday's Oman visit.
Analysts say a diplomatic momentum generated by aid efforts in the quake's aftermath could bolster Assad's relations with other countries in the Middle East that have so far resisted normalisation.
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on Saturday a consensus was building in the Arab world that a new approach to Syria would be needed to address humanitarian crises including the quake.
"The status quo is not working and... we need to find some other approach," Prince Faisal bin Farhan told the Munich Security Conference.
"What that approach is, is still being formulated," he said.
Saudi wants to send medics to quake-hit Syria: official
Riyadh (AFP) Feb 20, 2023 -
Saudi Arabia hopes to send medical volunteers to areas of Syria rocked by the recent earthquake that killed thousands in the war-torn country, an official told AFP on Monday.
The kingdom severed ties with the regime of isolated Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2012.
But it has sent aid to both rebel-held and government-controlled parts of the country in the aftermath of the 7.8-magnitude tremor that struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6, killing more than 44,000 people.
On Monday, the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre announced nearly $50 million in additional relief to both Syria and Turkey.
The new pledges, unveiled at the start of a two-day humanitarian forum in the Saudi capital, include a project that could send Saudi medical volunteers to Syria for the first time, said Dr Abdullah al-Rabeeah, the centre's supervisor general.
"On the medical side, one of the projects we signed in the forum was related to actually the Syrian territories, because they are actually short of mobile clinics," Rabeeah said.
"That's the first phase, and we hope that we'll see our Saudi volunteers on the ground."
Riyadh has so far avoided direct contact with the Assad government, coordinating instead with the Syrian Red Crescent on aid going into government-controlled territory.
Last week a Saudi plane carrying aid landed in Syria's second city Aleppo -- the first in more than a decade of war.
Saudi Arabia has sent 14 flights to Turkey and Syria so far, and mobilised some $200 million through government allocations and fundraising for the relief effort, Rabeeah said.
"We did not see from the fundraising process in Saudi Arabia... any differentiation between the two populations, whether they are Syrians or Turkish," he said.
"We did not see the diplomatic or the political side affecting the humanitarian side."
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on Saturday that a consensus was building in the Arab world, that a new approach to Syria requiring negotiations with Damascus would be needed to address humanitarian crises including the quake.
"There is a consensus within the Arab world that the status quo is not working and that we need to find some other approach," Prince Faisal bin Farhan told the Munich Security Conference.
"What that approach is, is still being formulated," he added.
A policy change could also help resolve the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan and Lebanon, he said.
"That's going to have go through a dialogue with the government of Damascus at some point, in a way that achieves at least the most important of the objectives," including refugee returns, he said.
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