A 10-truck aid convoy entered the opposition-held areas in Syria's northwest from regime-controlled regions on Friday, for the first time since the deadly twin earthquakes centered in Türkiye's southeast devastated the area in February.
An official of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirmed that trucks carrying humanitarian supplies crossed from regime-held Aleppo to Idlib.
On Feb. 6, two strong earthquakes struck southeast Türkiye and Syria, killing more than 50,000 people and causing wide-scale destruction.
Main highways from Türkiye leading to Idlib, the last opposition stronghold in Syria, were also affected. "This assistance is the first of its kind," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
In the wake of the earthquake, aid deliveries to affected areas became a political battleground, with Assad's opponents and many aid organizations pushing for the United Nations to send more aid shipments to northern Syria by way of Türkiye. Meanwhile, the Syrian government and its ally, Russia, pushed for the aid to be sent via Damascus.
The U.N. is usually only allowed to deliver aid through a single border crossing from Türkiye, at Bab al-Hawa, at the insistence of Russia, which is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
After the earthquake, Assad agreed to the opening of two new crossing points from Türkiye, at Bab al-Salam and al-Raee on a temporary basis. In practice, however, most of the cross-border aid continued to come via Bab al-Hawa. The mandate for cross-border aid deliveries at Bab al-Hawa is up for renewal next month at the U.N. Security Council.
Representatives of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham have declined to comment on the reasons for their change in stance on aid coming from government-held areas. But Sam Heller, a fellow with the New York-based Century International research center, said the group’s decision may be related to next month's vote at the U.N.
He said Russia’s U.N. envoy has complained about the lack of cross-line deliveries, and allowing one now may have been intended to encourage Moscow to approve the continuation of cross-border aid.
"The cross-border mandate will only be renewed with Russia’s consent," he said.
Syria Response Coordination Group, a humanitarian organization working in northwest Syria, said in a statement that "humanitarian convoys have been at the mercy of international political tensions” and called for international organizations to find ways to increase the amount of assistance reaching the area.
