UN: 40 truckfuls of food aid for Syrians set to spoil

By Fatih Erel

GENEVA (AA) - The UN on Thursday warned that 40 trucks of food languishing at the Turkish-Syrian border, waiting for permission from the Syrian regime, will be expiring next Monday.

“Forty trucks are sitting at the Turkish-Syrian border, the food will be expiring on Monday, and the drivers are sleeping at the border and had done so now for a week,” said Jan Egeland, special advisor to the UN’s Syria envoy.

"East Aleppo is militarily encircled, it is impossible to get in with our aid," he told a joint press conference in Geneva with Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, the UN deputy special envoy for Syria, after a meeting of the International Syria Support Group's Humanitarian Access Task Force.

Addressing Syrian regime leader Bashar Assad, he pleaded, "Do your bit to enable us to get to eastern Aleppo and also the other besieged areas. We also have to get assurances on the east Aleppo case from the armed opposition groups to be able to enter."

Egeland called the attack on the aid convoy in Big Urem outside of Aleppo this Monday "the worst attack ever sustained on a UN cross-line, cross-border convoy."

The UN has asked for an independent investigation of the attack, he noted.