MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Moscow and Washington confirmed their commitment to enhance efforts to promote humanitarian assistance to Syrians in a joint statement issued May 9. The International Syria Support Group (ISSG) that Russia and the US co-chair is scheduled to take place next Thursday, May 19, in Vienna.
"We take heart in the Russian-US statement which says that we will be granted access to all of the besieged areas and all of the medical supplies that are unloaded will be granted. That's what the Russians and the Americans said in a joint statement last week, and that is what we expect to be ratified in Vienna next week," Jan Egeland told reporters.
"We have had an assessment mission, now plan to go in the two besieged areas – Fuah and Kefraya, besieged by armed opposition groups. These are the areas to where we will send a number of convoys," he said.
According to the UN adviser, the mission was not allowed in previously. "It’s not just the government which is creating problems. A number of excuses were made… We have not had a proper UN assessment in Fuah and Kefraya," Egeland added.
Since the beginning of the year, the UN reached 781,425 civilians in Syria, over half of them in hard-to-reach areas and more than a quarter million in besieged areas, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report.
