Syria puts aid needs inside country at $1.4 billion

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Syrian families affected by the country’s civil war need $1.4 billion in aid, a senior Syrian official said Thursday, adding that only 43 per cent of that was being met.

“Humanitarian aid is dispensed according to the resources available, but there’s a deficit of 57 per cent,” media quoted administration minister Omar Ghalwanji as saying.

Ghalwanji announced the figures during a meeting with Yacoub el-Hillo of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), media reported.

Ghalwanji thanked the UN for delivering aid to Syrian civilians “in the difficult circumstances facing the country.”

OCHA said this week that more than 600,000 people in Syria were in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, a large number of them in areas that are difficult to reach.

They include people in areas where an alleged chemical weapons attack was carried out on August 21, reportedly killing hundreds of people.

The conflict, which grew out of peaceful anti-government protests that began in March 2011, has killed more than 110,000 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The UN says two million Syrians have become refugees and another four million have been displaced inside the country.