UN: At least 422,000 Syrians lack humanitarian aid in besieged areas

The United Nations was unable to deliver humanitarian aid to 422,000 Syrians living in besieged areas in July as the situation in the country continues to deteriorate, a U.N. official said Thursday. U.N. Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien urged the U.N. Security Council to do everything possible in its power to push for a political solution to end the conflict in the country. He added that human suffering was exacerbated in areas under siege, adding that another 4.6 million people live in hard-to-reach areas where only 12 percent of them received food aid over the past months.

"It is difficult to find words that would justly describe the depth of suffering that the Syrians face on a daily basis. Having just returned from the country, I have seen a glimpse of this grim reality myself," he said. "I left the country deeply saddened and outraged," he added.

He told the U.N. Security Council that since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, 250,000 people have been killed and 1 million Syrians have been injured. Some 7.6 million people have been internally displaced, including more than 1 million people this year alone. More than 4 million Syrians have fled the country. "We may all be living on borrowed time," O'Brien told the council. "I am angry, because we as the international community are not allowed and able to do more to protect Syrians who more than ever need our unfaltering support."

He condemned the indiscriminate attacks by the Syrian government and rebel forces in August, including government-led airstrikes on a marketplace in Douma that killed more than 100 people and shelling in Damascus by non-state actors. "This tit-for-tat approach by the warring parties is causing devastation to the ordinary women, men and children of Syria and it must stop," O'Brien said.

According to the statement on the U.N.'s website, O'Brien also met senior government representatives and discussed the overall humanitarian response and the need to protect civilians more effectively. The statement said the U.N. only reached 12 percent of people in besieged areas with food each month and 3.4 percent with health supplies during the first half of 2015.

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council on Thursday that he is planning to set up a three-person team to investigate alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria. The move came amid new reports of a mustard gas attack in Syria that local activists said could have been carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The investigative panel will seek to identify who is behind the attacks, in line with a U.N. resolution adopted this month to establish responsibility for the use of the banned toxic agents. The team will have "full access to all locations" and "may establish contact and receive information from any parties" in Syria. Ban described the panel's mission in a seven-page letter and will await the council's green light before launching a recruitment drive for top experts to carry out the mission. After a resolution in September 2013, Syrian President Bashar Assad was required to eliminate the country's chemical weapons stockpile and stop the use of chemicals as weapons. However, even after the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) verified and destroyed the country's declared chemical weapons, attacks using chlorine gas and other toxic chemicals have been reported.

Doctors Without Borders said earlier this week it had treated civilians suffering from apparent exposure to a chemical agent in Marea, a town near the northern city of Aleppo, following an attack last week. The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said its own doctors had identified the agent as mustard gas. "The continuing reports of the use of chemical weapons, as well as the use of toxic chemicals as a weapon in the Syrian conflict are deeply disturbing," Ban said in a separate statement Thursday. "The international community has a responsibility to hold the perpetrators accountable and to ensure that chemical weapons never be used again as an instrument of warfare," he said.

In March 2011, Syrians were emboldened enough to raise their voice against the dictatorship of Bashar Assad. However, the regime's response was not as peaceful as the protests, and the country was subsequently dragged into a deadly civil war after opposition groups took up arms against the government. The Syrian civil war has now entered its fifth year and has caused the deaths of more than 250,000 people with at least 60,000 missing and some 7.6 million being internally displaced. While international and regional powers continue endless discussions, reportedly, the Syrian regime continues to use chemical weapons. The vast majority of Syrian refugees have fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey. Western countries have frequently been criticized by aid agencies and the U.N. for not opening their borders to Syrian refugees, as the most developed countries have received the least number of refugees.