International aid is beginning to flow into Turkey, towards Syrian rebel areas from Turkey, and towards Damascus, for areas under Syrian government control. It was in one of them that President Bashar al-Assad went, visiting this Friday, February 10 with victims of Aleppo, after Monday’s earthquakes.
The images released by the Syrian presidency show Bashar al-Assad and his wife in a hospital in Aleppo, at the bedside of victims of the earthquake, in a school transformed into a shelter to house the victims, in a mosque and in a church in the second city of Syria.
The leader also went to meet rescuers. Then, speaking to journalists, he criticized the attitude of the West after the earthquake.
Humanitarian aid is arriving in Syria, including from countries that have broken with the regime in Damascus. In this particular moment, can Bashar al-Assad hope to reduce the political isolation of his country? Syria has been suspended from the Arab League for twelve years. It is under European and American sanctions.
A country ravaged by war and asphyxiated by a serious economic crisis, Syria officially requested the aid system of the European Union this week. The EU makes it clear that it supports the population, but not the Assad regime. Same distinction on the side of the United States. And in Brussels as in Washington, we promise the greatest vigilance in the face of the risk of diversion of humanitarian aid sent to areas under government control.
After the earthquake, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, calls for a ” immediate ceasefire in Syria, to enable the delivery of aid to this torn and still unstable country after twelve years of war.
► See also Earthquakes: despite the crisis, Lebanon sends aid to Syria