Civilians living in northwestern Syria are continuing to suffer at the hands of the Bashar Assad regime as well as terrorist organizations.
The White Helmets Syrian civil defense group on Thursday announced that “regime forces and Russia bombed the periphery of an IDP camp in Deir Samman village and the outskirts of Alqatura village with artillery shelling in the western countryside of Aleppo.”
It said that teams were at the scene of the bombing, and no casualties were recorded.
A day earlier, the group had stated that one civilian was injured by artillery shelling fired from areas controlled by the regime and the PKK terrorist organization’s Syrian wing, the YPG.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said on Thursday that six civilians including one child were killed by unidentified parties in the war-torn country.
For years, the Assad regime has ignored the needs and safety of the Syrian people, only eyeing further gains of territory and crushing the opposition. With this aim, the regime has for years bombed civilian facilities such as schools, hospitals and residential areas, causing the displacement of almost half of the country’s population.
Local people living in areas held by the YPG have also long suffered from its atrocities, as the terrorist organization has a notorious record of human rights abuses including kidnappings, recruitment of child soldiers, torture, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement in Syria. The YPG has forced young people from areas under its control to join its forces within its “compulsory conscription.”
On the other side, the local people living in northwestern Syria had a moment of relief when the United Nations recently decided that the last border crossing will remain open for another six months.
Humanitarian organizations expressed some relief mixed with criticism on Wednesday for the short extension of U.N. aid for people in need in Syria.
After days of deadlock, the U.N. Security Council agreed on Tuesday to extend the authorization for cross-border aid deliveries to suffering people in Syria by only six months, as demanded by Russia.
“It’s good news that we can continue the cross-border aid operation,” tweeted U.N. Deputy Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in Syria Mark Cutts.
“Millions of lives depend on it,” he added.
The aid organization Care, on the other hand, said it was “very disappointed” by the extension of only six months.
“In the midst of the pandemic, a severe economic crisis and increasingly scarce resources, millions of people are struggling to survive,” the secretary general of Care Germany, Karl-Otto Zentel, said.
“Now is the time for more, not less, humanitarian aid,” he added.
The mandate, which was set in 2014, expired on Sunday after Russia used its veto power late last week to block Western-backed Security Council resolutions to extend it by one year.
The aid deliveries flow through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing from Turkey to Syria’s northwestern Idlib region, where some 4.4 million people live, according to U.N. figures.
“As the special envoy recently noted to the Security Council, cross-line, cross-border, and early recovery are absolutely crucial to bring life-saving, and life-sustaining, humanitarian assistance to all parts of Syria,” Jenifer Fenton, spokesperson of the U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).
The head of the White Helmets, Raed Saleh, said that what happened today in the U.N. Security Council is a consolidation of the political stalemate in the Security Council. “It’s an indication of how the council has departed from its primary mission of protecting lives and achieving security. Instead, it has become a source of threat to the lives of civilians.”
“The mandate will end on January 10, which will be the very moment when humanitarian needs peak,” Saleh wrote on Twitter.
“We renew the call for an independent mechanism that guarantees the continuation of delivery of aid without allowing any political blackmail. We stress that the humanitarian crisis in Syria is the outcome of the absence of a political solution and the abandonment of UNSCR 2254,” he added.