Nations pledge $10 billion for aid to Syria

London: Yesterday, a donor conference of nations was held in Westminster, London, United Kingdom, to collect money for aid to Syria. UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced on the occasion that more than $10 billion had been pledged in a day for “food, medical care, and shelter”, and other purposes like building schools to benefit one million Syrian children by the end of the coming school year. Cameron also said this was the biggest sum ever collected for an international crisis in one day.

The goal of the “Supporting Syria and the Region” conference was getting more than $7 billion asked for by the United Nations and around $1.3 billion by countries of the region. Pledges included $3.3 billion from the European Union; $1.7 billion from the UK until 2020; $2.6 billion from Germany until 2018; and for 2016, $1 billion from France and $935 million from the United States.

Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said that a Syrian government offensive with Russian air support is sending about another 70,000 Syrians to the Turkish border, and expressed with concern that this would continue. Syrian rebels have suspended Geneva, Switzerland peace talks with the regime of Bashar al Assad, protesting the current offensive. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights recently said Russian airstrikes have killed around 1,400 Syrian civilians.

From Wikinews under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 licence