UNITED NATIONS // Syria has agreed to allow access for ground convoys to deliver medicine and food aid to 12 besieged areas during the month of June, the United Nations said on Friday.
Damascus has also agreed to restricted aid deliveries to three more areas but rejected requests for two others, the UN office of humanitarian affairs said.
The approvals came as the Security Council discussed UN plans to carry out airdrops of food and medicine to civilians trapped in areas under siege.
Some diplomats dismissed the move by Damascus, saying such approvals had been granted in the past and failed to materialise on the ground.
According to the UN, a total of 592,000 people are living under siege in Syria, the majority surrounded by regime forces, while another four million live in hard-to-reach areas.
Out of the total requests for access to 34 locations, 23 were approved in full, six were approved for some deliveries of medicine but not food, and five were rejected.
Damascus agreed on partial deliveries to Moadamiyeh, Daraya and Duma, but refused access to besieged areas of Homs’ Al Wa’er neighbourhood in western Syria, and to the rebel-held city of Zabadani in the south-west.
After addressing the closed meeting of the Security Council, UN aid chief Stephen O’Brien said that Syria must grant full access to all areas in need of aid.
It came as Syria regime forces backed by Russia advanced towards the ISIL-held town of Tabqa in the north of the country, an opposition monitoring group said.
“Russia-backed regime forces now stand less than 40 kilometres from Lake Assad” to the south-west of strategic Tabqa, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The town – controlled by ISIL since 2014 – lies some 50 kilometres to the east of the extremist group’s de facto Syrian capital, Raqqa.
“Tabqa is more important than Raqqa city as it lies near the dam where IS has a large prison” and near the Tabqa military airport, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Taking Tabqa would mean cutting the supply road into Raqqa from the east.
“It’s big advance for 24 hours,” added Mr Abdel Rahman.
Pro-regime troops had advanced around 20 kilometres since Thursday, killing at least 17 ISIL fighters and losing nine fighters in their own ranks.
The advance came as a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance pressed an offensive, launched last week, towards Tabqa from the opposite direction.
On Friday the Syrian Democratic Forces stood around 60 kilometres to the north-east of the town.
Meanwhile, regime air strikes killed dozens of civilians in the northern city of Aleppo and nearby areas.
The raids were the most intense in more than a month, with dozens of barrel bombs dropped on several rebel-held eastern districts of the city.
Ten people were killed when a bus they were travelling in was hit on the Castello road, a key rebel supply route out of Aleppo, the civil defence said.
At least 28 other civilians were killed in the strikes.
“There are people under the rubble and we’re still looking for the missing,” said a civil defence volunteer who gave his name as Khaled.
* Agence France-Presse
