UN official encouraged by uptick in relief convoys; earthquake death toll passes 35,000

The United Nations’ emergency relief coordinator said some in Syria “rightly feel abandoned” due to a lack of international aid, but added he was “encouraged” by an uptick in relief truck convoys. The relief comes as recovery efforts wind down following a devastating earthquake that killed more than 35,000 people. 

“At the #Türkiye–#Syria border today. We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” Martin Griffiths said on Twitter on Sunday.

Griffiths later remarked that more trucks with U.N. relief were rolling into the region. 

“I am encouraged by the scale-up of convoys from the UN transshipment centre at the Turkish border. We need to open more access points and get more aid out fast,” he said.

Griffiths has been on the ground as rescuers and response teams continue to try to recover people trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Turkey and Syria after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake and intense aftershocks crippled the region on Feb. 6. 

But Griffiths said Monday that the rescue phase of response operations is coming to a close as the death toll continues to climb, passing 35,000 casualties.

“What we’ve seen happening in these zones of the earthquake is that the rescue phase is dragging live people out from the rubble and finding those who died in the rubble, that’s coming to a close,” Griffiths said, according to CNN.

“And now the humanitarian phase, the urgency of providing shelter, psychosocial care, food, schooling, and a sense of the future for these people, that’s our obligation now.”

After a U.N. aid convoy arrived in northwest Syria on Friday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said “much more is needed — and much faster.”

The World Health Organization launched a $43 million appeal for earthquake response as U.N. authorities urge the response needs to be taken “to the next level.”