MIDDLE EAST: United Nations humanitarian agencies said yesterday they were still largely blocked from bringing relief supplies into Lebanon and from getting injured and chronically sick people to hospitals.
The agencies spoke just before Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his government would allow aid airlifts through its air and sea blockade to its northern neighbour.
But the first reaction was that the Israeli move did little to solve the immediate humanitarian crisis.
"It is enormously frustrating to be right on the back doorstep of Lebanon and ready to move in with hundreds of tonnes of aid, but the door remains closed," spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis of the refugee agency, UNHCR, told a news briefing.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said hospitals in the south were running out of medicines and fuel for the generators that they have been forced to use since Israeli bombing cut off normal power supplies.
The agencies said the situation for civilians was getting worse by the day in southern Lebanon - where Israel has been attacking the Islamic Hizbullah militia for nearly two weeks - and in temporary shelters for people who have fled the area.
Ms Pagonis said supplies for 20,000 people packed into parks or public buildings in and around Beirut "are still blocked in Syria, waiting a safe route into Lebanon".
Humanitarian officials and reports from the region say Israeli aircraft have bombed roads and destroyed bridges on roads from the Syrian border - apparently in an effort to stop fresh weapon supplies reaching the Hizbullah."We have urgently needed tents, mattresses, blankets and other aid which would be delivered in only a matter of hours if only we had access to the country," Ms Pagonis said.
Mr Olmert's announcement of permission for aid airlifts and a linked offer of a humanitarian corridor from Israel itself came after talks in Jerusalem with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Top UN officials and independent humanitarian bodies have been calling on Israel for days to guarantee the security of aid convoys to heavily bombed areas of the south. But, asked later to comment on the Israeli move, Ms Pagonis said it did not appear "to address the immediate situation we are confronted with right now" - the absence of safe passage authorisation for the supplies waiting in Syria.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it had set up two southern bases, in the port of Tyre and the town of Marjayoun, and was sending medical assistance to border villages needing urgent help after two weeks of war. "Things have not stabilised yet. There are a lot of people stuck in the south," Andreas Wigger, ICRC head of delegation in Lebanon, said.
The Red Cross started distributing aid four days ago and is concentrating on 200 villages in the hills of southern Lebanon, where heavy bombardment has forced tens of thousands to flee and left others stranded. Many remain beyond its reach.Mr Wigger said the ICRC moved only with prior consent from the Israeli army.