Aid group official warns that impasse at the UN on border crossing puts 4.1 million Syrians at risk

The head of a leading aid group says an impasse at the United Nations over a border crossing with Syria’s last rebel-held enclave is endangering 4.1 million Syrians living there. The comments by David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee came more than two weeks after the U.N. Security Council failed to renew the mandate for the Bab al-Hawa border crossing between Syria and Turkey, which secures aid for Syrians in the enclave. The vast majority of people in northwestern Syria live in poverty and rely on aid to survive — a crisis that was further worsened by a devastating earthquake in February. Miliband says “people of northwest Syria can ill afford a new wave of suffering.”