UN resumes aid convoys

UN aid convoys starting rolling in Syria again yesterday, after a deadly attack on humanitarian trucks and a warehouse triggered a suspension in deliveries.

"Today we are sending an inter-agency, cross-line convoy with urgently needed aid to people in a besieged area of rural Damascus," United Nations humanitarian agency (OCHA) spokesman Jens Laerke said in a statement.

"We have resumed aid deliveries based on the humanitarian imperative," he added.

Laerke told AFP in an email that this was the first convoy to head towards a besieged area since Monday's attack on a humanitarian convoy which killed around 20 people, including a Red Cross staffer.

Food aid for rebel-held east Aleppo, which has been stalled at the Syrian border since last week, will go bad in days, the UN said, urging Assad to clear the delivery.

"Forty trucks are sitting at the Turkish-Syrian border. The food will be expiring on Monday," the head of the United Nations humanitarian taskforce for Syria, Jan Egeland, told reporters in Geneva.

The UN has estimated that roughly 600,000 people are stuck in Syria's 18 besieged areas. Accessing them, and others in so-called hard-to-reach areas has become a top UN priority.

Meanwhile, huge blazes erupted in Aleppo as the city was rocked by fighting and air strikes yesterday, ahead of last-ditch efforts by world powers to salvage a failed ceasefire.

The top diplomats from the United States and Russia were to meet with other key players in New York later yesterday, after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Syria's peace process was facing a "make or break moment".

A "minister" in Syria's opposition government was among at least 12 people killed in a car bomb attack in the south of the country yesterday, the body's spokesman said.

"Twelve people, including the (opposition) provisional government's local administration minister, Yaacoub al-Ammar, were killed" and dozens more were wounded, Shadi al-Jundi told AFP by telephone.