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2023 Turkey-Syria earthquake
WorldEurope

Turkey-Syria quake: Aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres makes urgent appeal to scale up for Syria

  • Activists, rescue teams in Syria’s northwest have decried a slow UN response to the quake in Syria’s rebel-held areas
  • The aid group says supplies ‘currently fail to even match pre-earthquake volumes’, and that ‘aid is trickling in negligible amounts’

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A convoy of trucks from Doctors Without Borders (MSF), carrying aid to earthquake victims, drives past tents sheltering survivors, after entering Syria from Turkey via the al-Hamam border. Photo: AFP
Agence France-Presse

The group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) called Sunday for the “urgent scaling up” of earthquake aid to northwest Syria as it delivered a convoy laden with emergency assistance.

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Aid has been slow to reach Syria’s rebel-held areas since the February 6 quake killed a combined total of more than 44,000 people across Turkey and Syria.

“An urgent increase in the volume of supplies is needed to match the scale of the humanitarian crisis,” said the French aid group.

It charged that supplies “currently fail to even match pre-earthquake volumes”.

A convoy of 14 trucks laden with 1,269 tents and winter kits sent by MSF had arrived in Syria through the Al-Hammam crossing in the Afrin area on Sunday. Photo: AFP
A convoy of 14 trucks laden with 1,269 tents and winter kits sent by MSF had arrived in Syria through the Al-Hammam crossing in the Afrin area on Sunday. Photo: AFP

“Aid is trickling in negligible amounts for the moment,” said Hakim Khaldi, MSF’s head of mission in Syria. “We emptied our emergency stocks in three days.”

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“According to UN data, five days after the earthquake, only 10 trucks had entered” rebel-held areas of Syria through the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey, MSF said.

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