Relief aid from China is unloaded at Damascus international airport in Damascus, Syria, on Feb. 13, 2023. A second batch of relief aid from the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) arrived in Syria by plane on Monday to provide emergency supplies for people affected by the earthquakes in the country.(Photo: Xinhua)

Chinese envoy urges immediate lifting of unilateral sanctions on Syria to return the "hope of survival" to children in the country as the US' long-arm jurisdiction has further exacerbated the earthquake disaster and hindered rescue efforts with more children's lives as the cost.  

Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations (UN), on Monday called for an immediate lifting of unilateral sanctions by the countries concerned to return the "hope of survival" to children in countries like Syria. 

Nearly a week since the most devastating earthquakes in recent history, the combined death toll in Turkey and Syria surpassed 38,000 while searches for signs of life in the rubble amid freezing temperatures continues.  

A UN official pointed out on Sunday in a post on Twitter that international help has "failed the people in northwest Syria," where more than 12 years of civil war have resulted in a complex political situation. 

According to Zhang, the unlawful unilateral sanctions have led to a severe shortage of heavy equipment and search and rescue tools in the aftermath of the powerful earthquakes in Syria, raising grave concerns that many children under the rubble may have perished as a result of rescue coming too late or insufficient rescue capacity. 

"We urge the countries concerned to lift all their unlawful unilateral sanctions immediately without conditions, not to become accomplices to the natural disaster, not to rob Syrian children of their hope of survival, and desist from their hypocritical political grandstanding," Zhang said. 

Syria has faced US sanctions since 1979, which have got worse since then. This situation has brought real difficulties and pain amid the earthquake, with even medication and survival equipment unable to be bought from other countries because Syrian banks are cut off from the international financial system because of the sanctions, Mohammed Hasanein Khaddam, Syrian Ambassador to China said in an exclusive interview with the Global Times. 

Under the pressure of international public opinion, the US Treasury announced a 180-day exemption last Thursday to its sanctions on Syria for "all transactions related to earthquake relief efforts."

However, the US' gesture is just a temporary expedient to mollify the public under the pressure of international and domestic public opinion and using sanctions as a solution to the problems, which derives from its mentality of being the "boss of world," has never changed, analysts said. 

A chartered plane carrying the Chinese government's first shipment of humanitarian aid supplies including emergency medical equipment and supplies for earthquake relief left Nanjing in East China's Jiangsu Province on Tuesday morning and it is expected to arrive in Damascus, Syria, on February 15 local time, according to the China International Development Cooperation Agency. 

Before that, two batches of supplies provided by the Red Cross Society of China to Syria had arrived in Damascus as of Monday local time. 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday that the US government should immediately lift unilateral sanctions against Syria instead of making a political show of a temporary easing. 

After the earthquake, the unilateral sanctions of the US directly hindered the 72-hour golden period to help Syria, which made the local disaster worse, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during Monday's press briefing.