The UN has decided to stop its programme of dropping relief on Deir Azzour via air- a programme in which food and other relief items were dropped five days of the week for three continuous years, reaching approximately 100,000 people who were living under a siege imposed by ISIS. Recently, regime forces broke the siege on the city on 5/9/2017.
Since April 2016, the World Food Programme (WFP) completed 309 airdrops on Deir Azzour. On the other hand, regular food and relief items being delivered via land will provide an estimated 37 million American Dollars a year, enough to provide food aid to another 200,000 people a year according to UN data.
After the siege on the city was lifted, the UN sent five lorries full of wheat flour to provide for 70,000 people in Deir Azzour. The lorries were sent via the al-Salmiah route, which connects the provinces of Homs and Deir Azzour.
The UN has only sent relief via airdrops to the besieged area of Deir Azzour, claiming that it could not do the same to other besieged areas in Syria such as Aleppo, rural Damascus and other areas due to the absence of technical capabilities and political approvals. This has resulted in the deaths of scores of people and the enforced migration and displacement of tens of thousands.