The United Nations condemned the barrel bombing of the town of Daraya by regime forces hours after the arrival of the first convoy carrying food to the city since 2012.
Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, said that the UN condemns in the strongest words any attacks against civilians whether in the form of barrel bombs or shelling.
“It’s hard to imagine how much more suffering the people of Syria can take, and this is what Mr. Staffan de Mistura, the Secretary General [sic] has been calling for, for some time, is a halt to the violence,” Dujarric told reporters in New York on Friday.
Activists said that the Assad regime’s helicopters dropped nearly 68 barrel bombs on Daraya on Friday very shortly after the UN convoy left the rebel-held town.
Trucks from the United Nations and Syrian Arab Red Crescent brought a month’s supply of food for 2,400 people in Daraya, Jens Laerke, spokesman of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said on Friday.
However, the Assad regime did not approve delivery of three burns kits that would have been enough to treat about 30 people with dressings and painkillers, rejecting them from the approved list, World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said.
Some 1.9 tons of medicines for chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes as well as antibiotics, from the WHO were on that convoy, Jasarevic added.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on Thursday said that helicopters of the Assad regime had dropped no fewer than 974 barrel bombs on rebel-held areas across Syria during May. (Source: Syrian Coalition + Agencies)
