BEIRUT (Reuters) – An aid convoy from Syria’s Kurdish-led region to earthquake-hit areas of the northwest was turned back on Thursday, failing to reach those in need in the latest example of how relief efforts are being complicated by civil war enmities.
The hostilities that criss-cross Syria, shattered by nearly 12 years of conflict, are an added challenge for aid workers trying to get help to people affected by an earthquake that has killed more than 21,000 in Turkey and Syria.
The convoy had been attempting to go from a region held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) into an area under the control of Turkey-backed rebel factions – enemies that have fought numerous bouts of conflict during the Syrian war.
Sources on both sides traded blame for why the convoy didn’t cross, accusing each other of trying to politicise aid.
Bearing the emblem of the Kurdish-led administration, the convoy including numerous fuel tankers waited for hours at the crossing point, Reuters television footage showed.
Jawan Ibrahim, spokesperson for the Kurdish-led administration, accused Turkey – which has troops on the ground in the northwest – and some rebel factions of preventing it from crossing.
A senior Turkish official said this was absolutely not true and Turkey was not blocking aid.
Syrian opposition sources familiar with the matter accused the SDF of politicising the issue with demands including that the shipments carry SDF logos – a sensitive issue to many in the region given hostilities.
Turkey has mounted three incursions into northern Syria to counter the main Syrian Kurdish groups, which it sees as a national security threat because of their links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, deemed a terrorist group by Ankara.
Ibrahim said the Kurdish-led administration, which controls Syria’s main oil fields in the east, was “in discussion with the other parties, especially the international parties, to convince the other side to let in this aid”.
U.N. aid flows from Turkey into the rebel-held northwest, where some 4 million people already depend on assistance, were temporarily suspended because of the earthquake but resumed on Thursday.
The United States has called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to immediately allow aid through all border crossings.
A Turkish official said on Friday Turkey is discussing re-opening a border crossing into Syrian government territory, enabling aid to be sent directly to areas under Assad’s control after a decade of enmity between him and Ankara.
Turkey is also looking at opening another crossing into the rebel-held Idlib region, the official said.
The Syrian government, which is under Western sanctions, has appealed for U.N. aid while saying all assistance must be done in coordination with Damascus and delivered from within Syria, not across the Turkish border into rebel areas.
(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Orhan Coskun in Ankara; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Frances Kerry)
