Aleppo emergency aid plan for fleeing families

Islamic Relief’s Syria team is poised to support thousands of people fleeing the city.

Our team in Syria is preparing a distribution plan to ensure that emergency aid items stocked in our warehouses outside Aleppo are delivered where people need them most.

Up to 100,000 residents are expected to leave the city in the coming days and travel to safer areas in northern, western and southern Aleppo, as well as to the city of Idlib.

“Thousands of lives have been lost and the people of Aleppo have suffered terribly through many months of siege conditions, bombardments and fierce fighting,” says our Head of Mission for Syria, Mohamed Goumni.

“Our prayer is that the evacuation will be completed as straightforwardly and peacefully as possible, and our Syrian staff and volunteers are working hard to provide displaced people with food and medical aid.”

For months our team on the ground in the area surrounding Aleppo have been helping to distribute fresh bread to families driven from their homes.

rs49374_imgl1084Now we are stepping up this operation to support larger numbers of displaced and evacuated people, assessing the needs of new arrivals in order to support them with immediate distributions of cooked meals, baby milk and hygiene kits.

Islamic Relief’s emergency response for those fleeing Aleppo also includes providing medicines to health centres and stocking local bakeries with wheat flour for fresh bread.

And as winter is drawing in, our teams are preparing to help families who have left their homes behind by providing seasonal support including heaters with fuel, clothes and boots, and nutritious meals.

Our Syria team is coordinating with Syrian organisations in the area to ensure emergency aid is delivered in the most effective way possible.

Islamic Relief has been working in Syria since 2011 and has assisted more than 6.5 million Syrians – most of them inside the country but also hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled to Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

We continue to lobby the international community to halt the crisis, and call for essential humanitarian corridors.