Iran Ready to Deliver More Relief Aid to Syria's Aleppo: FM Adviser
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An adviser to the Iranian foreign minister said Tehran was ready to use all the means at its disposal to deliver more humanitarian aid to war-ravaged people in Syria’s northwestern city of Aleppo in cooperation with Russia.
"We are fully ready for this joint humanitarian operation with Russia, we shall use all of our resources that we have," Hossein Sheikholeslam told Sputnik on Friday.
Iran is also ready to deploy doctors and deliver water, food, medicines and warm clothes to the area, he added.
"Iran and Russia need in cooperation with the Syrian government to take all necessary measures as soon as possible," Sheikholeslam said.
"Even now, when the army of (Syrian President) Bashar Assad with support of its allies managed to achieve significant success and liberate large territories, it is high time for Iran and Russia to fight back with their joint operations against the tactics of information warfare led by western and some Arabic media, falsely accusing us of inaction and unwillingness to provide humanitarian aid to Syrian civilians," he went on to add.
On Friday, the head of the Relief and Rescue Organization of the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS), Morteza Salimi, said Iran has dispatched its third consignment of humanitarian aid to Aleppo, adding that the shipment included 150,000 food cans.
He added that two consignments of relief aid, weighing about 80 tons, have already been sent to the crisis-hit city over the past two days. They included tents, blankets and oil heaters.
The IRCS official noted that Iran has so far dispatched 28,000 blankets, 400 tents, 800 rugs, 5,000 oil heaters, 1,400 boxes of dried bread, eight tones of medicines, 700 sets of dishware and 165,000 food cans to people in Aleppo.
The UN Syria humanitarian adviser, Jan Egeland, said in the Swiss city of Geneva on Thursday that Russia has proposed setting up four humanitarian corridors to militant-held eastern Aleppo in a bid to let in aid and facilitate evacuations from the battered Syrian city.
Egeland further estimated at least 400 injured people are in need of urgent medical evacuation, adding that talks will be held on using “these corridors to get medical supplies and food in.”
By Wednesday, some 18,000 people had entered Aleppo’s government-controlled areas while about 8,500 had crossed into Sheikh Maqsoud, a Kurdish-held Aleppo district, the UN official said.
Over the past few days, about 30,000 people have received aid after fleeing eastern Aleppo, taking the total number of displaced people in the city to over 400,000, he said.
Syria has been gripped by civil war since March 2011 with various terrorist groups, including Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL), currently controlling parts of it.
According to a report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people, injured 1.9 million others, and displaced nearly half of the country’s pre-war population of about 23 million within or beyond its borders.
