Operation will deliver aid to Deir ez-Zor, where up to 20 people have died of starvation due to severe food shortages
The UN will make its first airdrops of food to tens of thousands of Syrian civilians over the next few days and is aiming to deliver aid to all of the country’s 18 besieged areas within a week.
Jan Egeland, the head of the UN task force on humanitarian access to Syria, said on Thursday that the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) had a “concrete plan” for using airdrops to get food to the city of Deir ez-Zor, where 200,000 people surrounded by Islamic State militants are enduring severe food shortages and rapidly deteriorating conditions.
Egeland provided no details of the aerial operation but said airdrops were the only way to reach “the poor people inside Deir ez-Zor”. Unverified reports have suggested that up to 20 people in the city have already died of starvation.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva a day after UN aid convoys reached five areas – some besieged by government forces and others by rebels – he added: “It’s a complicated operation and would be in many ways the first of its kind.”
Deir ez-Zor, which lies in the province of the same name in eastern Syria, links Isis’ de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighbouring Iraq. Russian cargo planes reportedly delivered tens of tonnes of humanitarian aid to regime-held neighbourhoods in the city last month.
Egeland, who is the special adviser to the UN’s Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said he was confident aid would reach those in other cut-off regions within the next few days.
Speaking after a three-hour meeting of representatives from the 17-nation International Syria Support Group (ISSG), he said: “We discussed the next phase, which is to reach all of the remaining besieged areas of Syria. And we should be able to do [so] before the next meeting, which will be in a week.”
Egeland said many member states had pledged support for the attempt to reach Deir ez-Zor, adding there had been “excellent cooperation” between Russia and the US.
But although he noted that UN trucks had managed to deliver life-saving food and medical supplies to 80,000 people in five besieged areas in the previous 24 hours, Egeland repeated calls for greater access to more than 4 million people in hard-to-reach areas of Syria.
“The people of Syria ... have waited too long for relief,” he said.
The announcement of UN airdrops follows weeks of speculation and mounting international pressure for more to be done to reach starving Syrian civilians.
As well as being risky, costly and complex – with the potential to jeopardise the lives of crews flying through dangerous airspace – airdrops are no automatic guarantee that aid will reach the intended targets. Without adequate organisation, order and cooperation on the ground, airdrops can fall into the wrong hands or be carried off by the strongest before they can be distributed to older people and children.
The WFP said it was planning a high-altitude operation that would involve a specially equipped plane, a highly experienced crew and the use of parachutes to drop food and other aid supplies to Deir ez-Zor.
Jane Howard, a WFP spokeswoman, said the agency would be working with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and a local partner on the ground to prepare the drops, as well as to collect and distribute the food and other aid.
“It would be a complicated operation,” she said. “Airdrops are always a last option for us and we would still prefer land access, which is easier, safer and the most cost-effective. However, we will use every opportunity to reach hungry people.”
The British government said last month that although humanitarian aid airdrops by the RAF were being discussed by the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development, they would be used only as a last resort.
The latest road convoys were made possible by a deal struck at an ISSG meeting in Munich last week, where many of the key actors in the Syrian conflict, including Damascus ally Russia, agreed to increase humanitarian access. The ISSG also reached a deal on a cessation of hostilities in Syria, but its prospects appear grim as fighting continues.
The UN estimates there are more than 480,000 Syrians living in areas besieged by the government, rebels and jihadi forces.
