Syria: Daraya hit by airstrike day after aid drop

Published June 24th, 2016 - 07:00 GMT
An aid convoy prepared to leave for the besieged town of Daraya. (AFP/File)
An aid convoy prepared to leave for the besieged town of Daraya. (AFP/File)

A Syrian town was bombed one day after receiving airdropped aid, UN humanitarian aid chief Stephen O'Brien said Thursday.

The diplomat said Daraya was hit by dozens of barrel bombs and was "now dubbed Syria's capital of barrel bombs."

The incident "shows that the situation for people in besieged and hard-to-reach areas will not be solved by humanitarian aid delivery alone," O'Brien said.

He added that five million Syrians are stranded in hard-to-reach areas.

A UN-led aid plan for Syria has faltered as the Muslim world observe the holy month of Ramadan.

Francois Delattre, permanent representative of France to the UN and current Security Council president, earlier this month announced that the Syrian government had been unresponsive to an international plan to start aid delivery June 1.

The plan was announced last month by US Secretary of State John Kerry on behalf of the International Syria Support Group.

“A very high number of access requests made by the United Nations are still denied as we speak by the Syrian authorities," Delattre said at the time.

More than 250,000 victims have been killed and almost half the Syrian population has been displaced in five years of war, according to UN figures.

Some activists place the number of casualties at almost double the UN figure.

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