Red Cross willing to maintain contacts with Russia in Syria

MOSCOW, April 26. /TASS/. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sees the need to cooperate with Russia in Syria, ICRC Vice-President Christine Beerli said in an interview with TASS. "We helped to facilitate, together with all parties and mainly so with the Russian Federation and the Russian armed forces being on place in December last year, the evacuation of about 35,000 people out of east Aleppo, with this operation a lot of lives were saved," she said. "The needs in Syria are immense, it’s very positive if help comes from all sides. No international organization, NGO, or state sponsored help can cover all, it’s very important that everybody procures its part to the humanitarian situation in Syria," Beerli added. The ICRC vice-president also said that the Committee had "to be in contact with all the parties to the conflict." "We speak and have contacts with the Syrian government, with the Russian Federation, with the armed groups," she said. According to her, international humanitarian law is a law for all "and has to be respected in these situations by everybody, by all the governments, but also by non-state armed groups." "The civilian population is in a very difficult situation," she went on to say. "If you take a city like Aleppo… then you have a lot of houses just in rubbles, people live in ruins. About 120 thousand people came back to eastern Aleppo and they are now living in ruins of their houses, which sometimes is very dangerous," the ICRC vice-president pointed out. Read more