UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths has announced a special donation of $25 million (€23.34 million) to boost relief efforts in earthquake-affected areas of Syria.
The funds, from the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), will address some of the most urgent needs of the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the earthquakes, the UN said in a statement.
The additional grant comes on top of another $25 million released earlier this week for response efforts in the region, bringing CERF’s total so far to $50 million (46.72 million euros) for emergency response operations in the region.
«We are responding as quickly as we can to help the Syrian people, who have already suffered so much (…) We are grateful for the overwhelming support from around the world to support search and rescue efforts,» Griffiths said in a statement.
In this regard, the United Nations has pointed out that the earthquake has occurred at a time when humanitarian conditions in Syria «are worsening» and in which the needs have reached «their highest level since the conflict began», amid resource shortages, a cholera outbreak and «harsh winter conditions».
So far, the earthquakes have left around 3,424 people dead and more than 5,200 injured in Syria, between the figures offered by the health authorities of the Government of Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian Civil Defense, known as ‘white helmets’ and located in the provinces of Idlib and Aleppo (northwest).
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
