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Strategic Border Crossing Reopens Allowing UN Aid to Reach Opposition-Held Northwest Syria

A worker unloads boxes of humanitarian aid in a World Health Organization warehouse in Sarmada, in northern Syria on September 19, 2023. (AFP)
A worker unloads boxes of humanitarian aid in a World Health Organization warehouse in Sarmada, in northern Syria on September 19, 2023. (AFP)
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Strategic Border Crossing Reopens Allowing UN Aid to Reach Opposition-Held Northwest Syria

A worker unloads boxes of humanitarian aid in a World Health Organization warehouse in Sarmada, in northern Syria on September 19, 2023. (AFP)
A worker unloads boxes of humanitarian aid in a World Health Organization warehouse in Sarmada, in northern Syria on September 19, 2023. (AFP)

A United Nations aid convoy reached opposition-held northwest Syria Tuesday after a vital border crossing from Türkiye reopened following an agreement with the Syrian government.

The 17-truck convoy carrying among other things, medicine, food supplements, stationery supplies and medical equipment crossed into Idlib through the strategic border-crossing of Bab al-Hawa Tuesday afternoon.

Last month, the UN reached an agreement with Syria's government to reopen the crossing, used to deliver 85% of aid to Syria's northwestern Idlib province, where the majority of its 4.5 million residents live in poverty after being internally displaced during Syria's conflict, now in its 13th year.

The deal was agreed on after the UN Security Council failed to authorize two rival resolutions on July 11 to renew the border crossing's authorization. The United States, United Kingdom, and France were key advocates of the UN aid delivery, whereas Syria's key allies, Russia and China, called for delivering aid to opposition-held areas through Damascus instead.

The UN has been exclusively using two northern crossings to deliver aid to opposition-controlled areas since July 9, making it extremely challenging because of poor infrastructure and route length. In August, the UN sent 195 trucks loaded with aid to the opposition enclave.

“UN aid is the artery for the citizens of northwestern Syria. Without it, there would be a humanitarian disaster in the area,” Mazen Alloush, an official on the Syrian side of the border crossing, told The Associated Press. He said he hoped more convoys would reach the area in the coming weeks

The United Nations did not immediately comment on the aid delivery.

The Syrian conflict started as an uprising against President Bashar Assad in 2011 and was met with a harsh crackdown that plunged the country into years of civil war, killing nearly half a million people and displacing half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.

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Sudan Army Says Enters Key RSF-Held Al-Jazira State Capital

Sudanese people rally to celebrate in Meroe in the country's Northern State on January 11, 2025, after the army announced entering key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (AFP)
Sudanese people rally to celebrate in Meroe in the country's Northern State on January 11, 2025, after the army announced entering key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (AFP)
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Sudan Army Says Enters Key RSF-Held Al-Jazira State Capital

Sudanese people rally to celebrate in Meroe in the country's Northern State on January 11, 2025, after the army announced entering key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (AFP)
Sudanese people rally to celebrate in Meroe in the country's Northern State on January 11, 2025, after the army announced entering key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, held by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). (AFP)

The Sudanese military and allied armed groups launched an offensive Saturday on key Al-Jazira state capital Wad Madani, entering the city after more than a year of paramilitary control, the army said.

In a statement, the armed forces "congratulated" the Sudanese people on "our forces entering the city of Wad Madani this morning".

Sudan's army and Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitaries have been at war since April 2023, leading to what the UN calls the world's worst displacement crisis and declarations of famine in parts of the northeast African country.

A video the army shared on social media showed fighters claiming to be inside Wad Madani, after an army source told AFP they had "stormed the city's eastern entrance".

The footage appeared to be shot on the western side of Hantoub Bridge in northern Wad Madani, which has been under RSF control since December 2023.

The office of army-allied government spokesman and Information and Culture Minister Khalid al-Aiser said the army had "liberated" the city.

Sudan's foreign ministry hailed "the great victory achieved today", saying the army had regained Wad Madani.

The army, meanwhile, said its forces were "currently working on clearing the remnants of the rebels inside the city".

With a months-long communications blackout in place, AFP was not able to independently verify the situation on the ground.

Wad Madani is a strategic crossroads of key supply highways linking several states, and is the nearest major town to the capital Khartoum.

A victory in Al-Jazira would be the army's biggest breakthrough since it seized control of the capital's twin city of Omdurman nearly a year ago.

"The army and allied fighters have spread out around us across the city's streets," one eyewitness told AFP from his home in central Wad Madani, requesting anonymity for his safety.

- Celebrations -

Both the army and the RSF have been accused of war crimes including targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.

But the paramilitaries specifically have been notorious for summary killings, rampant looting, systematic sexual violence and laying siege to entire towns.

The United States on Tuesday said the RSF had "committed genocide" and imposed sanctions on its leader, Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.

The local resistance committee, one of hundreds of pro-democracy volunteer groups across the country coordinating frontline aid, hailed the Wad Madani advance as an end to "the tyranny" of the RSF.

Eyewitnesses in army-controlled cities across Sudan reported dozens taking to the streets in celebration.

Chants of "one army, one people" broke out in army-controlled Omdurman, part of greater Khartoum 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Wad Madani, an eyewitness told AFP, requesting anonymity for their safety.

Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands and uprooted more than 12 million people, more than three million of whom have fled across borders.

In the early months of the war, more than half a million people had sought shelter in Al-Jazira, before a lightning RSF offensive displaced upwards of 300,000 in December 2023, according to the UN.

Most have been repeatedly displaced since, as the feared paramilitaries moved further and further south.

"We're going back!" crowds in the de facto capital of Port Sudan on the Red Sea shouted in the street on Saturday after the army's announcements.

The RSF still holds most of the rest of the central agricultural state, as well as nearly all of Sudan's western Darfur region and swathes of the country's south.

The army controls the north and east, as well as parts of the capital.