UN aid groups intensify Syria relief efforts

Beirut - More than four million people live in besieged or hard-to-reach areas with little or no access to food or medicines.

Aid groups launched their largest delivery of assistance yet in war-torn Syria on Thursday after the UN evacuated hundreds of besieged residents, intensifying relief efforts even as peace talks falter.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that the 65-truck convoy of food and medicines to the besieged rebel-held town of Rastan was the first aid it had been able to deliver to the area's 120,000 residents since 2012.
Earlier, the United Nations evacuated 500 people "in urgent need of life-saving medical attention," and their families, from four other besieged towns, two held by the government and two by rebels.
The two relief operations came after the Syrian opposition walked away from UN-backed peace talks complaining that more needed to be done to relieve civilians in rebel-held areas.
More than four million people live in besieged or hard-to-reach areas with little or no access to food or medicines.
ICRC spokesman Pawel Krzysiek said Thursday's convoy was carrying food parcels, wheat flour and other nutritional items, as well as medicines and equipment to improve water supply in Rastan, a rebel-held enclave in the central province of Homs that has been under army siege since 2012.
"This is the largest joint humanitarian convoy we have done in Syria so far," he said.
Once they reach Rastan, ICRC and Syrian Arab Red Crescent teams will assess the water and waste infrastructure, as well as the nutritional and other needs of residents.
Many of the 120,000 people living in and around the town had fled fighting in Hama province.
The United Nations carried out the medical evacuations from the four besieged towns in a carefully synchronised joint operation with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent that lasted through Wednesday night.
At dawn on Thursday, the evacuees were brought to a staging area in a rebel-held part of central Syria before being transported on for treatment, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
Exactly 250 evacuees were brought out of the besieged rebel-held towns of Madaya and Zabadani near Damascus.