- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asma, visited survivors of the earthquake that has killed thousands across Turkey and Syria
- Head of the Syrian White Helmets emergency response group accused the UN of failing to deliver appropriate humanitarian aid to rebel-held areas of the country
- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made his first visit on Friday to a region stricken by an earthquake that has killed thousands in his country, his office said.
The president and his wife Asma visited survivors at their bedsides at a hospital in the northern city of Aleppo, images published by Syrian official media showed.
Assad also visited areas of the city damaged by Monday’s 7.8 magnitude quake, whose epicentre was across the border in Turkey, according to images released by the presidency.
More than 22,000 people have died across Turkey and Syria as a result of the quake, one of the worst disasters to hit the region in around a century.
More than 3,300 of them have been killed in Syria, according to health ministry figures and a rescue group. Aleppo province has so far counted 415 deaths and 1,050 injured, according to the health ministry.
Assad this week had been seen presiding over a government meeting and receiving an official Lebanese delegation, but had yet to visit a quake-hit area.
Diplomatically isolated since civil war broke out in his country in 2011, the Syrian president has received calls and aid from Arab leaders since the earthquake, momentum analysts say he could leverage to bolster regional support.
World Health Organization (WHO) director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also plans to visit the Syrian city of Aleppo on Friday, according to his cabinet chief in Geneva.
WHO could not initially say whether Tedros would also visit rebel-controlled regions around Idlib.
The head of the Syrian White Helmets emergency response group accused the United Nations on Friday of failing to deliver appropriate humanitarian aid to rebel-held areas of the country ravaged by the earthquake and its aftershocks.
Raed Al Saleh, who leads the group, said the area had not received any aid from the UN since Monday’s earthquake aimed at disaster response, saying that the six trucks that crossed the border into Syria on Thursday had been a regular shipment that had been delayed.
“The trucks that entered yesterday are a convoy that was scheduled to enter on Monday but was late due to the earthquake”, he told reporters via video link from Idlib. “Until now no aid has arrived to northwest Syria from the UN as a response to the earthquake”.
Saleh called the United Nations’ response “catastrophic” and said the body should “apologise to the Syrian people for the lack of help it provided”
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saleh’s allegations.