United Nations Security Council has renewed a cross-border operation delivering aid to millions of Syrian civilians but number of crossings and length of authorization were halved to avoid a Russian veto.

During a meeting, Security Council allowed cross-border aid deliveries to continue from two places in Turkey, but dropped crossing points from Iraq and Jordan. It also only renewed the operation for six months instead of a year.

The United Nations said 2.7 million people in northwestern Syria and 1.3 million in the northeast relied on aid from the cross-border operations.     

NNR/Khokhar