The government in Damascus has decided to allow aid to pass by land to rebel-held areas from Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa crossing for six months, starting Thursday, Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh told reporters.
The Bab al-Hawa border crossing was closed on Monday after Russia vetoed in the Security Council a nine-month extension of a resolution allowing humanitarian aid to pass through. Russia only wanted to extend the agreement by six months, and when that proposal failed, Moscow vetoed it.
The stalemate threatened to cut off the last lifeline for 4.1 million people in need, as Bab al-Hawa had been the UN’s only route to transport supplies to the war-torn country. The aid shipments meet more than 80 percent of the needs of the people living in rebel-held areas.
Since 2014, the agreement has allowed deliveries of food, water and medicine by land from Turkey to rebel-held areas of Syria without permission from Damascus – which regularly condemns the deliveries as a violation of the country’s sovereignty. Now, however, the Syrian government has opened the lifeline on its own.