UN aid crosses into northwestern Syria

A total of 178 trucks carrying aid from Turkey into northwest Syria have crossed the border since Feb. 9, the United Nations said.

Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the trucks are carrying a “multitude” of items from six U.N. agencies — including tents, mattresses, blankets, winter clothes, cholera testing kits, essential medicines, and food from the World Food Program.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said that according to recent assessments in Syria's northwest, 50,000 households need tents or emergency shelter and at least 88,000 households need mattresses, thermal blankets and clothing. In addition, the U.N.’s partners says hospitals and medical centers “are overstretched and under-resourced,” he said.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, said it was working closely with Turkey to determine the steps needed to rehabilitate infrastructure in the agricultural sector damaged by the quake, including irrigation systems, roads, markets and storage capacity.

“In Syria, rapid assessments by FAO of areas affected by the earthquakes suggest major disruption to crop and livestock production capacity, threatening immediate and longer-term food security,” the Rome-based agency said in a statement.