UN-backed aid convoy reaches hard-to-reach area in Syria's Rastan

An inter-agency UN-Red Cross-Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy has managed to reach Rastan city in northern rural Homs to deliver food, water and other supplies to local people in the area, a UN spokesman said here on Tuesday.

"This is the first cross-line inter-agency convoy in November and the fourth inter-agency delivery to the area this year," spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing.

Rastan, about 20 km north of Homs, was last reached on July 27.

"While we welcome the convoy to Rastan today, it is worrying that no inter-agency convoy had been able to deploy until this late in November," Dujarric said.

"The result is that we are once again unlikely to reach more than a small portion of those for whom we receive formal approval to access -- due to deliberate restrictions, needless administrative hurdles as well as insecurity."

He said the UN would continue to call for safe, sustained and unimpeded humanitarian access to all in need in Syria, particularly those living in hard-to-reach and besieged areas.

Rastan is the third largest city in the Homs province with a population of a bit more than 100,000. The rebel-held countryside of the central province has been under severe siege along with constant aerial bombing.

The Sirian civil war broke out five years ago after the anti-government protests escalated into an armed conflic, with more than 250,000 people being killed and millions fleeing their homes to escape the war. Enditem