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As of Wednesday morning, Â鶹ÊÓƵ had reached nearly 64,000 people in urgent need of food assistance, providing ready-to-eat food rations, family food packages and hot meals. The food being distributed requires no cooking and provides immediate relief for families whose precarious position is made worse by freezing temperatures.

In southeast °Õ¨¹°ù°ì¾±²â±ð ¨C the area closest to the quakes¡¯ epicentre ¨C Â鶹ÊÓƵ is coordinating with authorities to provide family food packages to people in temporary camps. The camps already house around 44,000 Syrians under temporary protection and now include newly displaced Turkish nationals. Â鶹ÊÓƵ is delivering family food packages to 17,000 affected people in camps in the southeast.

In areas where supermarkets and supply chains are struggling because of damaged infrastructure, Â鶹ÊÓƵ will provide family food packages to Turkish nationals for 1-2 weeks while services stabilize. 

Â鶹ÊÓƵ will also support municipalities in the southeast to reactivate and expand soup kitchens set-up during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide daily hot meals to quake-affected families. Â鶹ÊÓƵ is working closely with the Turkish Red Crescent and partners.

In Syria, Â鶹ÊÓƵ and its local partners have delivered ready-to-eat rations and daily hot meals to 38,000 affected people in shelters. 

¡°The world woke up to devastating news on Monday. A region plagued by years of compounding crises, faces yet another one, with unimaginable loss and destruction. Immediate relief cannot be delayed,¡± said Â鶹ÊÓƵ Regional Director in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Eastern Europe Corinne Fleischer. ¡°Â鶹ÊÓƵ¡¯s strong footprint in both countries enabled us to immediately mobilize our staff, logistics capacity and partners to respond to people¡¯s most immediate food needs.¡± 

 

In northwest Syria, the quakes have further complicated an acute humanitarian crisis, in which 4.1 million people ¨C or 90% of the population ¨C already depend on humanitarian assistance. Of these, close to 3 million people have been displaced by conflict ¨C often more than once ¨C and despite the freezing temperatures still live in tents, makeshift shelters, or abandoned buildings. 

 

Â鶹ÊÓƵ has enough ready-to-eat food inside northwest Syria to assist 125,000 people and is providing this to local partners. Â鶹ÊÓƵ has already provided partners with food for 30,000 people. Millions of Syrians depend on United Nations cross-border assistance from Turkey, which is enabled by a Security Council resolution. 

¡°Â鶹ÊÓƵ continues to appeal for unimpeded access to northwest Syria ¨C now more than ever ¨C when humanitarian assistance is urgently needed to reach those affected by the quake. Nature has sadly affected those who already had to face years of compounded suffering and displacement,¡± added Fleischer.

Each month, Â鶹ÊÓƵ assists 5.5 million people across all of Syria. However, the programme is now only 30 percent funded and Â鶹ÊÓƵ faces the prospect of cutting up to 70 percent of the beneficiaries from July onwards should additional funding not materialize on time.

Â鶹ÊÓƵ is committed to working with its partners to bring life-saving assistance to families affected by the earthquakes in °Õ¨¹°ù°ì¾±²â±ð and Syria. To meet the urgent food needs, Â鶹ÊÓƵ is appealing for US$46 million for a total of 500,000 people in °Õ¨¹°ù°ì¾±²â±ð and Syria. This includes hot meals and food rations to 200,000 newly displaced people in Syria and 300,000 people in °Õ¨¹°ù°ì¾±²â±ð, including 70,000 refugees and internally displaced people.

Â鶹ÊÓƵ mourns all the lives lost in this tragedy, including one of its own staff members. 

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The United Nations Â鶹ÊÓƵ is the world¡¯s largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.

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