MUNICH: The head of the World Food Programme (WFP) on Saturday pressured authorities in northwestern Syria to stop blocking access to the area as it seeks to help hundreds of thousands of people ravaged by earthquakes. The agency last week said it was running out of stocks in northwest Syria and called for more border crossings to be opened from Turkiye.
Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, WFP Director David Beasley said the Syrian and Turkish governments had been cooperating very well, but that its operations were being hampered in northwestern Syria. "The problems we are running into is the cross-line operations into northwest Syria where the northwestern Syrian authorities are not giving us the access we need," Beasley said.
"That is bottlenecking our operations. That has to get fixed straight away." Beasley said the devastation on crucial infrastructure and buildings would mean that survivors would need help for months to come, but the WFP, which is providing hot meals and take-home rations, would run out of money in about 60 days. - Reuters
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