First UN aid convoy to Beirut Wednesday

800 people affected

The UN emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said on Monday that he hoped the first convoy to Lebanon with humanitarian aid will be able to be sent off on Wednesday morning.

Speaking at Larnaca Airport where he stopped over from his visit to Beirut on his way to Israel, Egeland gave an account of his visit to war-torn Lebanon, noting it was “very, very emotional to see the amount of destruction” in the country.

“This war is really affecting first and foremost the civilian population in Lebanon; hundreds of thousands of people have now fled”, Egeland remarked.

He reminded that on Monday he launched from Beirut an international appeal for urgent humanitarian assistance. “I hope Cyprus can generously contribute too”, he said, adding that the UN has asked for 150 million dollars for life saving relief.

Egeland said there are 800,000 people who have been affected by the war because they have fled or in other ways want help.

Cyprus, he added, “is playing an important role in our operation”, noting that “now we are using Limassol (port) as the staging ground for feeder vessels to go out to Beirut and we hope soon to Tyre in the south and to Tripoli in the north”.

Egeland said the UN will probably use Larnaca airport “for relief supplies from many places in the world and then we believe we have a breakthrough in terms of internal convoys to the people that have most affected. We hope that the first convoy will be able to send off on Wednesday morning”, he added.

Asked if he had managed to get the safe passages he wanted, Egeland replied “what we have now is a safe passage by sea from Cyprus to Beirut”. He expressed the hope that soon there will also be a safe passage by sea from Cyprus to Tripoli “when we will bring by sea grain again from Cyprus and by sea also to Tyre”.

By road, he added, the relief will go “from Arida in the north with convoys down to Beirut and from the south into the country where the situation is desperate at the moment”.