UN deputy regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis Mark Cutts on Wednesday condemned the killing of a humanitarian aid worker in an explosion in a market area of Al-Bab, a north Syrian city controlled by Turkey.
“Nothing can justify these cowardly, indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians, and I condemn this latest attack in the strongest terms,” Cutts said in a statement.
The aid worker was involved in a health project funded by the UN in Al-Bab, providing services for people affected by COVID-19 and leaves behind a wife and young daughter. According to the statement, two others, a driver and a coworker, were injured in the same attack.
It was the latest in a series of attacks in Turkish-controlled areas of northern Syria that have killed and wounded scores of people. Turkey along with Free Syrian Army forces took control of the Jarablus and al-Bab areas in northern Syria during an operation called Euphrates Shield against Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants between August 2016 and March 2017.
The UN official underlined that at least 14 humanitarian aid workers had been killed in northwest Syria in the last 14 months as a result of airstrikes, shelling, car bombs and other improvised explosive devices.
“With an average of one humanitarian worker killed every 30 days, this makes northwest Syria one of the most dangerous places in the world for humanitarian workers,” Cutts stated.
Cutts, based in Turkey’s Gaziantep province on the border with Syria, coordinates the UN’s cross-border humanitarian assistance delivered from Turkey to Syria as mandated by the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.
