14/02/2014 10:38
Syria crisis: UN 'must stop flagrant violation of humanitarian law'
UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos has urged the Security Council to act immediately to ensure more humanitarian access in war-torn Syria, the BBC reported.
Calling for a resolution, she said it was "unacceptable" that both Damascus and rebels continued to "flagrantly" violate humanitarian law.
The council has been deadlocked over aid deliveries in Syria, where millions have been forced to flee their homes.
Meanwhile, Syrian troops resumed their attack on a key rebel town.
Warplanes have been carrying out air strikes and artillery has been pounding Yabroud since Wednesday. The town is the last rebel stronghold in the Qalamoun mountains, near the Lebanese border.
There has been a surge in fighting across Syria in recent weeks, with both side apparently trying to gain territory to strengthen their hands in ongoing peace talks in Geneva, Switzerland.
The negotiations between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and Syrian opposition groups remained deadlocked, with both sides failing to even agree a common agenda on Wednesday.
However, the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, was more hopeful, saying he had received assurances from US and Russian officials that they were willing to try to "unblock the situation."
Briefing the UN Security Council on Thursday, Baroness Amos said: "It is unacceptable that four months since the members of that Council demanded action, international humanitarian law continues to be consistently and flagrantly violated by all parties to the conflict.
"All parties are failing in their responsibility to protect civilians. We understand that a war is going on, but even wars have rules."
And referring to Thursday's decision to extend for a further three days a UN-brokered ceasefire in the besieged city of Homs to allow the evacuation of civilians, the under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs said the deal did not offer a long-term solution.
"It's 14 months since I raised the alarm in the Security Council about Homs. We managed to get 1,200 people out of Homs, we managed to get food and medicines in for 2,500 people," she said.
"If it's going to take 14 months to do that when you've got 250,000 people in besieged communities, when you've got over three million people in hard-to-reach communities, I really find it very difficult to say that this is a (right) model."