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22:10 GMT
NEW YORK, June 7 (KUNA) -- The UN announced Tuesday that only a partial approval for overland transport of the second installment of aid to Daraya, in Syria has been received.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters today that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is reverting to the Government to request full access, in order to be able to send the full convoy with all the food that had been in the plan for June.
"The convoys are very finely calibrated in terms of the kind of relief that was on them, and the second part of the convoy primarily consists of food," he said.
The written request submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on June 5th included a plan for airlifts - not airdrops - as a last resort, to Daraya, Douma and Moadamiyeh in rural Damascus Governorate, and Al-Waer in Homs Governorate. That request, said Dujarric, would only come into play if, for whatever reason, the UN could not get land access.
On Friday, the French President of the Security Council announced that the UN will officially submit request to Damascus on Sunday to authorize humanitarian air drops to reach localities for which land access was denied.
The statement issued back in May 17 by the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) decided that if the UN was not granted land access to besieged areas after June 1, then the World Food Program (WFP) should deliver humanitarian aid using plan-b which is air drops. (end)
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