Syria's Red Crescent ready to deliver aid to opposition-held areas

President of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Khaled Hboubati, attends a news conference in Damascus, Syria February 7, 2023. REUTERS/Yamam al Shaar

Syria's Red Crescent is ready to deliver relief aid to all the country's regions including opposition-held areas and is urging the United Nation to facilitate this, its head said on Tuesday.

"We do not differentiate between any of the Syrian people. We are the Syrian Arab Red Crescent for all the Syrian people," Khaled Hboubati told in a news conference.

At least 1,602 people have been killed and thousands injured in Syria following the earthquake and aftershocks in neighbouring Turkey.

Workers and security forces process aid from Red Crescent that will be shipped on a plane of emergency relief to Syria to support victims of the deadly earthquake, at a military airbase near Baghdad International Airport in Baghdad, Iraq, February 6, 2023. REUTERS/Ahmed Saad

"We are ready to send an aid convoy through the cross line to the stricken areas in Idlib region (in northern Syria). If they (the opposition) opened a road for us, we will go. We have no problem with this," Hboubati said.

He appealed to the United Nations, which has long coordinated the aid and relief operations in opposition-held areas, to help. 

His organisation needs heavy equipment, ambulances and fire engines to keep the rescue operations going, he said, calling for more international aid.

(Reporting by Mahmoud Mourad; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Alison Williams)