Extreme suffering should not be the trigger for Syria aid - ICRC

By Magdalena Mis LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Extreme human suffering, like that seen in the besieged town of Madaya, should not be the trigger for negotiating aid deliveries in Syria where "too many places and too many people" are in need but have no regular access to aid, said the Red Cross. Earlier this month two emergency convoys of aid supplies were delivered to the western Syrian town of Madaya, where thousands have been trapped without supplies for months and people were reported to have died of starvation. Without regular aid deliveries the situation in Madaya would go back to as it was before, so allowing regular aid deliveries to Madaya and other places is essential, said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). "Delivering aid once is not a solution. The only acceptable solution is to give people regular access to humanitarian aid," Pawel Krzysiek, ICRC spokesman, said ahead of an international pledging conference in London on Feb. 4. "The more time the parties take to negotiate another aid delivery ... we are risking again the situation of too little and too late," Krzysiek told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview on Thursday. Madaya was only "a tip of an iceberg" and there were many other areas in Syria where people were cut off from aid, Krzysiek said by phone from Damascus. "We are talking about too many places and too many people who are currently not getting regular humanitarian aid and for whom this aid is very often the only available lifeline," he said. The war in Syria has left more than 250,000 dead and sparked the world's worst refugee crisis since World War Two. Some 4.3 million Syrians have fled the country, and 6.6 million are displaced within Syria. Next week's donor meeting is being jointly hosted by Britain, Germany, Norway, Kuwait and the United Nations. "All people with Syria's present and future in their hands ... should take a deep breath and think of the suffering of millions of people in the country because the suffering is immense and it's growing every day," Krzysiek said. (Reporting by Magdalena Mis; Editing by Ros Russell)