GENEVA: The United Nations plans to make its first air drops of food aid in Syria, to Deir Al-Zor, a town of 200,000 besieged by Daesh militants, the chair of a UN humanitarian task force said on Thursday.
UN aid agencies do not have direct access to areas held by Daesh, including Deir Al-Zor, where civilians are facing severe food shortages and sharply deteriorating conditions.
Jan Egeland, speaking to reporters in Geneva a day after UN aid convoys reached five government-besieged areas, said the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) had a “concrete plan” for carrying out the Deir Al-Zor operation in coming days.
He said the WFP hoped to make progress reaching “the poor people inside Deir Al-Zor, which is besieged by Daesh. That can only be done by air drops,” said Egeland.
“It’s a complicated operation and would be in many ways the first of its kind,” Egeland said, giving no details of the air operation which is far more costly than land convoys.
Deir Al-Zor is the main town in a province of the same name. The province links Daesh’s de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighboring Iraq.
Egeland chaired a three-hour meeting of the humanitarian task force on Syria, where he said that many member states pledged support for the attempt to reach Deir Al-Zor.
UN to make first air drops of food to besieged in Syria
UN to make first air drops of food to besieged in Syria
Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch visits Gaza for Christmas
- The senior churchman “arrived in Gaza today for a pastoral visit to the Holy Family Parish, on the eve of the Christmas celebrations,” his office said
- During his visit, Pizzaballa will review developments in humanitarian response on the ground in Gaza
JERUSALEM: Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, arrived in Gaza Friday for Christmas Mass at the Holy Family Parish in Gaza City, which hosts the Palestinian territory’s only Roman Catholic church.
The senior churchman “arrived in Gaza today for a pastoral visit to the Holy Family Parish, on the eve of the Christmas celebrations,” his office said in a statement.
It said the visit “reaffirms the enduring bond of the Holy Family Parish in Gaza with the wider Diocese of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.”
During his visit, Pizzaballa will review developments in humanitarian response on the ground in the Gaza Strip as well as rehabilitation efforts.
He will also lead an anticipated Christmas Mass at the Holy Family Parish on Sunday, the statement said.
During his last visit to Gaza in July, Pizzaballa brought in 500 tons of food for residents suffering from shortages caused by Israeli restrictions on goods entering the devastated territory.
Pizzaballa and his Greek Orthodox counterpart, Theophilos III, were visiting after Israeli fire hit the Holy Family Church, killing three people.
A famine declared in Gaza in August is now over thanks to improved access for humanitarian aid, the United Nations said on Friday, also warning that the food situation there remained “critical.”
About 1,000 of 2.2 million Gaza inhabitants are Christians, most of them Orthodox.
The Latin Patriarchate says 135 Catholics live in Gaza. They sought shelter inside the compound of the Holy Family Church in the first days of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Some members of the Greek Orthodox church joined them in the compound owned by the Roman Catholic church.
