Aleppo down to 'last food rations': UN

The last remaining food rations are currently being handed out in Syria's rebel-held eastern Aleppo and there will be nothing left to distribute next week without a resupply, the UN said yesterday.

United Nations aid convoys have not reached the besieged eastern part of Aleppo since July, when regime forces cut off the last supply route.

"The reports we have now from within East Aleppo is that the last food rations are being distributed as we speak," the head of a UN-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, Jan Egeland, told journalists.

Egeland insisted that, with winter approaching, the need to avoid mass starvation would force all sides -- including the regime, its key ally Russia and the rebels -- to grant humanitarian access.

"I don't think anybody wants a quarter of a million people to be starving in east Aleppo," Egeland said, referring to the number of civilians the UN says are living under siege.

Egeland said he was confident access would be possible after four months of deadlock because "the consequences of no help and no supplies will be so catastrophic I cannot even see that scenario".

Meanwhile, a US-backed militia advance on the Islamic State group's Syria stronghold Raqa was being hampered by a sandstorm yesterday, a commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said.

"The situation is dangerous today because there is no visibility due to a desert sandstorm," the commander told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We fear that Daesh will take advantage of this to move in and launch a counter-attack," he said, using an Arabic acronym for IS.

Syria's main opposition group has urged US president-elect Donald Trump to protect civilians and help end the bloodshed in the country.

Riad Hijab, head of the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said Syrian civilians were in urgent need of protection from President Bashar al-Assad's regime, in a statement released on Wednesday night.

He called for American support to "establish peace in our region and to find fair and swift solutions for the threat of terrorism... especially the state terrorism practiced by the Syrian regime against the Syrian people," Hijab said.