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Syria
An elderly woman walks by on an empty street in the city of Qamishli in Syria's northeastern Hasakeh province, on April 18, 2020. Photo: Delil Souleiman/AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A senior official from the Kurdish-held northeast Syria (Rojava) said Saturday that they are receiving no help in fighting the novel coronavirus.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), known to Kurds as Rojava, used to receive international aid through al-Yarubiya border crossing with Iraq, but was left out of a Security Council vote to allow international aid into Syria due to Russian opposition.
The World Health Organization (WHO) submitted a memo to the Security Council this week, including a call from aid groups working with the UN to grant urgent permission for aid deliveries through al-Yarubiya, Reuters reported on Thursday.
But an updated version of the memo, dated Tuesday, no longer included the direct appeal to reopen the border crossing between Iraq and northeast Syria.
Abdulkarim Omar, co-chair of the NES' Foreign Relations Department, slammed WHO’s withdrawal of the demand, blaming some “regional” countries for pressuring the organization.
“We condemn this pressure on the WHO and the organization’s [change of] position,” Omar told Rudaw English on Saturday, adding that the pressure came from the international community but denied to name any specific country.
Moscow renewed its opposition to the reopening of the border crossing to international aid during the Wednesday meeting of the Security Council, according to Reuters.
Home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people, Rojava has mainly depended on the Semalka border crossing, connecting northeast Syria with the Kurdistan Region, for aid deliveries. It was closed on March 1 to stem the spread of COVID-19 and only reopened on April 20.
The NES official also said “the closure of the border crossing has severely affected the area, especially the camps of the displaced.”
“No one is helping us…we have not received any aid from international organizations,” Omar said when asked of efforts to combat the novel coronavirus.
Rojava has recorded three cases of the virus in Hasakah province, according to Omar. However, it is not clear whether this is included in the 43 cases announced by Damascus so far.
According to Omar, the only aid received has been from Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani, who sent four polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines needed to test samples for the virus.
In an interview with Rudaw in early April, Raparin Hassan, the co-chair of Rojava’s health board, said that they lacked medical supplies and hospitals, and are “ not 100% ready for the situation.”
The WHO also recently said it airlifted a 20-ton medical shipment to the city pf Qamishli, which a spokesperson said would be distributed to a number of hospitals controlled by the self-administration, as well as regime areas.
However, Omar and other Rojava officials have denied the arrival of any aid to the region.
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