Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, on Monday, said he would open two border crossing points to allow in more emergency aid for victims of the earthquake that has devastated parts of Turkey and Syria, and killed 36,000 people, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.
The two crossing points between Turkey and north-west Syria would be Bab al-Salam and Al Ra’ee, an AFP report reads.
Syria was in need of humanitarian aid even before the earthquake. "Opening these crossing points -- along with facilitating humanitarian access, accelerating visa approvals and easing travel between hubs -- will allow more aid to go in, faster," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told AFP. Guterres said that Assad agreed to open the crossing points after high-level talks in Damascus.
"We hope that the agreement will last as long as we need to use it. We will start using it as quickly as possible and I don't want to make any assumptions, the only thing I want to assume is that people will put politics aside wherever they stand in this conflict," Guterres' spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told BBC.
Before this, aid from government-held parts of Syria into the opposition-controlled territory was held up by 'approval issues'. Of the 36,000 deaths, about 5,700 are known to have been killed in Syria. The earthquake has left over a million people in Syria and Turkey homeless. The numbers could be higher, according to aid organisations.
As rescue workers, continue to work, the chances of finding survivors are now starting to look slim. the US has said that the new border openings would be a positive for Syria
