UN Prepares To Send Humanitarian Aid To Syrian Sweden After Deadly Clashes

JAKARTA - The United Nations (UN) is preparing to send a convoy of humanitarian aid to the Sweida province in southern Syria after days of bloodshed that killed hundreds of people and displaced about 175.000 people.

The preparations began after the Syrian Foreign Ministry gave the UN aid agencies the green light to access Sweida directly, according to a correspondence seen by Reuters, following three shipments of UN aid to the province carried out by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

The new UN convoy will include food and other supplies, according to bary Ward, head of the United Nations World Food Program in Syria.

"We are organizing a convoy with support from various UN agencies, which we expect will be the beginning of comprehensive access" to vulnerable communities," Ward told Reuters on Wednesday, July 30.

The violence in Sweida began on July 13, when local factions from the Druze 'such as the Islamic minority' clashed with Bedouin fighters.

The Syrian government sent troops to defuse fighting, but clashes intensified, killing more than 1,000 people, according to Syria's Human Rights Network, a war monitoring agency.

A fragile ceasefire brokered by the US brought calm nearly a week later, but Sweida residents told Reuters that electricity, food, medicine and water were still scarce.

More than 52,000 people have also fled to the neighboring province, Daraa.

"Basically, anyone living in Sweida now needs support, and anyone who has left Sweida to go to Daraa needs support," Ward said in an interview in Damascus.

The WFP has delivered nearly 250 metric tons of wheat flour to bakeries in Sweida and ready-to-eat food for 50,000 people in the province, as well as food support for 10,000 people in Daraa.

However, the protracted tensions in the province have prevented aid groups from opening regular routes to Sweida in the days leading up to the government's green light, humanitarian sources said.

Ward said UN agencies needed a stable ceasefire to produce permanent calm in order to reach Sweida's residents directly.

"We can't just leave him and run away - we have to be able to take him and give him to the people who need him the most," Ward said.