The United Nations delivered aid to a district in southeast Damascus on Thursday, one day after it said Syrian authorities had promised to allow humanitarian supplies to enter areas cut off by fighting. U.N. spokesman Khaled Masri said a convoy assisted by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent had brought food, medicine, and winter relief supplies to Al Ghuzlaniyah, close to the Damascus airport. Along with another convoy planned soon to a neighborhood west of the capital, the two deliveries would help about 20,000 people, Masri told Reuters by telephone from Damascus. The spokesman said Thursday's delivery was the first to reach Al Ghuzlaniyah, on the edge of the rebel stronghold of East Ghouta region, which has been under military siege by forces of President Bashar al-Assad for more than a year.
