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GENEVA / SYRIA AIR DROPS
STORY: GENEVA / SYRIA AIRDROPS
TRT: 02:32
SOURCE: UNTV CH
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 17 JANUARY 2017, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
RECENT - GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, exterior, Palais des Nations
17 JANUARY 2017, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
2. Wide shot, press briefing room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Bettina Lüscher, Spokesperson, World Food Programme (WFP):
“We have put on hold the airdrops operation on Deir ez-Zor for security and operational reasons. There is heavy fighting going on in and around the landing zone and in the parts of the city where the food distributions are taking place. And WFP partners simply cannot expose the lives of the 60 volunteers who are in the open landing zone and would receive the supplies and distribute them. It is simply too dangerous to do this now.”
4. Med shot, journalists
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Bettina Lüscher, Spokesperson, World Food Programme (WFP):
“We are reaching about 110 000 people that are in Deir ez-Zor city. That is enough for the entire population that needs food. We are dropping off mixed food commodities but also things for school, snacks for example, fortified date bars, that is, something that we are giving to children in school meals. Also soya yeast for the bread production and also of course everything that other aid organisations are saying, are giving us.”
6. Wide shot, journalists
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Bettina Lüscher, Spokesperson, World Food Programme (WFP):
“Overall it is important to see that we are doing huge aid operations all over Syria every month 4 million people, so this is only a very small part of what we are doing day in day out in Syria.“
8. Medium shot, journalists
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Bettina Lüscher, Spokesperson, World Food Programme (WFP):
“Well, in Aleppo itself we have provided ready to eat food for about 35, 000 returnees and IDP’s in eastern Aleppo plus some 10,000 people in western Aleppo, so that is going well there. We don’t have issues there.”
10. Close up, journalist
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Bettina Lüscher, Spokesperson, World Food Programme (WFP):
“Winter is here, it is a horribly cold winter, and people are desperate, more than five years of fighting and people are still cut off. So once again, for the umpteenth time, let us in, let us do our work. It is important, we have food; we have for the other organisations all the other supplies people in-need have. But of course, the situation goes on.”
12. Close up, journalist
The World Food Programme (WFP) announced today (17 Jan) that it has been forced, since Sunday (15 Jan), to temporarily suspend airdrops to the Syrian city Deir ez-Zor, due to ongoing heavy fighting between Syrian government forces and those of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
At a press briefing in Geneva, WFP spokesperson Bettina Lüscher said “we have put on hold the airdrops operation on Deir ez-Zor for security and operational reasons. There is heavy fighting going on in and around the landing zone and in the parts of the city where the food distributions are taking place.”
She added that “WFP partners simply cannot expose the lives of the 60 volunteers who are in the open landing zone and would receive the supplies and distribute them. It is simply too dangerous to do this now,"
According to WFP, the organisation has carried out 177 airdrops, reaching about 110, 000 people in Deir ez-Zor city since the beginning of the operation in April last year.
Lüscher said “we are dropping off mixed food commodities but also things for school, snacks for example, fortified date bars, that is, something that we are giving to children in school meals. Also soya yeast, for the bread production, and also of course everything that other aid organisations are saying, are giving us."
Lüscher explained that “overall it is important to see that we are doing huge aid operations all over Syria every month for 4 million people, so this is only a very small part of what we are doing day in day out in Syria.”
To put the suspension of the Deir ez-Zor airdrops into context, Lüscher said WFP’s aid deliveries for Aleppo, for example, are proceeding without major problems.
She said “in Aleppo itself we have provided ready-to-eat-food for about 35, 000 returnees and IDP’s in eastern Aleppo plus some 10,000 people in western Aleppo, so that is going well there. We don’t have issues there.”
WFP is currently working with authorities on getting bakeries that have largely destroyed during the fighting in the past months, to make bread again.
Access to other besieged and "hard to reach" areas remain full of obstacles, according to Lüscher.
She said “winter is here, it is a horribly cold winter, and people are desperate, more than five years of fighting and people are still cut off."
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