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UN continues to push for food aid delivery to Syria's besieged town

Xinhua, June 4, 2016 Adjust font size:

The United Nations continues with its efforts to get humanitarian aid to people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas in Syria, two senior UN officials said Friday.

The food aid delivery to Syria's besieged town continues as an inter-agency convoy on Friday returned to Moadamiyeh in Rural Damascus with food assistance completing the June 1 delivery for some 45,000 Syrian men, women and children in need.

The statement came as the UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, and UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Stephen O'Brien, were briefing the UN Security Council on the current situation in Syria.

The United Nations also continues to strongly advocate for food aid to be delivered to Darayya as soon as possible to complete the June 1 delivery that provided medicine, vaccines and nutritional items for children, they said.

"The situation in Darayya is dire, characterized by severe shortages of food, medicine, medical equipment and supplies, health facilities and personnel," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, told reporters here Friday.

Meanwhile, the United Nations also continues to call for unconditional, unimpeded and sustained access to all men, women and children in besieged and hard-to reach locations across Syria, particularly the 1.1 million people who the UN requested access to in June.

On Wednesday, inter-agency convoys delivered critical life-saving assistance to two besieged towns in Rural Damascus -- Darayya and Moadamiyeh. This was the first time that the UN has been able to deliver any assistance to Darayya since November 2012.

The Moadamiyeh convoy is the first of three planned convoys, bringing food for half of those in need, he said, adding that it is the fifth convoy to the town this year, but the first time the UN has had access since March.

Last week, Russia called for a 72-hour "regime of silence" in Eastern Ghouta and Daraya amid deadlocked efforts to turn a cessation of hostilities into a lasting peace in the war-torn Middle East country.

The United States and Russia are co-partners in the so-called Vienna diplomatic process of the International Support Group for Syria, which met last month in the Austrian capital but made no notable progress.

At least 280,000 people have been reportedly killed and more than half of Syria's population have fled their homes since the political crisis and subsequent armed conflict broke out in March 2011. Enditem