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| First UN aid flight takes off from Iraq for Syria |
| 2013-12-16 |
| The first United Nations aid flight from Iraq to Syria took off on Sunday after being delayed for several days due to bad weather. The plane departed the Arbil airport in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region about 3.30pm (1230 GMT), and was expected to arrive in Qamishli in northeastern Syria about 40 minutes later. “Over the next few days, we will be sending to Qamishli... 400 tonnes of food,” Abeer Etefa, senior Middle East spokeswoman for the UN World Food Programme, said. The flight that left on Sunday was carrying about 40 metric tonnes of aid, Etefa said. The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and children’s agency Unicef were also to send aid into Syria via air. The airlift, which has been given the go-ahead by both the Syrian and Iraqi governments, was initially expected to begin on Thursday, but was delayed by a storm that shuttered the airport in Qamishli. The civil war between forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and rebels seeking his overthrow has raged for 33 months and killed more than 126,000 people. But Kurdish-majority areas of the country’s northeast were relatively quiet until clashes broke out this year between Kurds and jihadist rebels, pushing tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds across the border into Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region. |
| Posted by:Steve White |