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Syrian men carry aid parcels provided by the U.N. World Food Program and the Syrian Arab Red …
Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY If humanitarian ground convoys fail to get through, the U.N. World Food Programme said Thursday it has plans for helicopter airdrops to urban areas where Syrians, many women and children, are starving. Officials conceded, however, that any air operations require approval from President Bashar Assad's regime.
"Land delivery is more effective, more efficient and less costly. Air delivery is complex and extremely expensive, but it remains an option," Ramzy E. Ramzy, a U.N. deputy special envoy for Syria, said during a news conference in New York.
Despite a cease-fire negotiated in February requiring Assad to allow humanitarian aid into blockaded areas, May was a dismal month for achieving that goal, said U.N. senior adviser Jan Egeland.
"We reached many fewer places and many fewer people than we did in March and April," he said at the news conference.
Part of a convoy loaded with vaccines and baby milk reached rebel-held Daraya and its 4,000 people Wednesday, the first aid allowed into that village since 2012. The trip was made possible because of a 48-hour period of calm beginning Wednesday that Russia negotiated with Syrian officials, Ramzy said.
The U.N. Security Council is slated to discuss the issue of humanitarian access Friday. Egeland said there are 592,000 Syrians in 19 areas of the country. Sixteen of those are under siege by the Syrian government or government-aligned forces, he said.
Egeland said the U.N. hopes to reach 11 besieged areas "in the next few days."
Some of the most dire conditions are in the community of al-Wae'r near the central Syrian city of Homs where 75,000 people are in "the worst nutritional situation of all the besieged areas," said Egeland. "We need to reach al-Wae'r and we are trying in the next days."
He said the Syrian Red Crescent had managed to push supplies through to the city earlier this week.
The World Food Programme said if air drops are necessary, they would have to be done by helicopters in most areas because high-altitude drops are not safe in urban centers. At least 11 helicopters would be necessary for such an operation, the organization said.
The relief effort was dealt a blow this week when the Syrian opposition's lead negotiator, Mohammed Alloush, resigned from his post because of what he said were failures by the international community to provide humanitarian assistance.
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