Almost 75 percent of UN requests for aid deliveries to Syria have gone unanswered by the Damascus government, the UN aid chief said Wednesday, branding such inaction as "simply unacceptable."
With a new round of peace talks days away, the United Nations is pushing for an end to Syrian sieges that are leaving civilians on the brink of starvation in the five-year war.
UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien told the UN Security Council that access to hard-to-reach areas was "simply not happening" and that the Syrian government had yet to give approval to most planned relief convoys.
"Our ability to access hard-to-reach and besieged locations remains severely hampered by the pitiful approval rate for inter-agency convoys by the Syrian authorities," said O'Brien.
AFP reports that, of the 113 requests for aid deliveries made last year, only 10 percent reached civilians.