United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Martin Griffithshas recognized this Sunday that the population of northwestern Syria has been “abandoned” before the lack of international aid to alleviate the consequences of this week’s devastating earthquake, which has already left more than 5,000 dead in the country, plus almost another 25,000 in southern Turkey.
Griffiths is on the border between the two countries to assess the situation in the area, after estimating yesterday that the death toll from the earthquakes could exceed 50,000 deaths once the count is over.
The head of the UN, meanwhile, has recognized the international failure to meet the needs of those affected in Syria.
international failure
“We have failed the people of northwestern Syria. They feel abandoned, and rightly so, in search of international help that has not arrived,” Griffiths lamented on his Twitter account.
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“My duty and my obligation,” he assured, “now consist of correcting this failure and I am concentrating on that now.”
The death toll from last Monday’s earthquake in northwestern Syria now stands at 5,273, according to the latest balance published by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The data for Syria is broken down by areas: 2,063 in the regions controlled by the government of President Bashar al Assad and 3,210 in the areas of the Salvation Government and the Syrian Interim Government, according to the Observatory.