GENEVA -Under an international agreement to aid Syrians trapped in the fighting, Russian planes will soon be dropping food in an operation partly financed by the United States.
The United Nations World Food Program will start its first airdrops in Syria in coming days, relief officials said Thursday. The main focus is Deir al-Zour, an eastern Syrian city where more than 200,000 inhabitants are ringed by forces of the Islamic State, which has made land access impossible.
Under the emergency aid agreement, truck convoys began supplying food and medicine to five besieged towns in other parts of Syria on Wednesday.
Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy for the Syrian conflict who helped to negotiate the final arrangements, had hinted that airdrops were an option for areas that are unreachable by land.
The World Food Program will use aircraft provided by a Russian contractor for the drops, which are conducted by parachute from high altitudes, said Bettina Luescher, a spokeswoman for the agency.
Mr. de Mistura said in an interview on Thursday with a Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, that the United States had agreed to provide $10 million for the airdrops. The United States is the largest contributor to the World Food Program.
The emergency aid agreement for Syria calls for food and medical deliveries to 480,000 people who the United Nations estimates are trapped in 18 besieged locations.
Encouraged by the successful delivery of aid on Wednesday, members of the international task force on humanitarian aid meeting in Geneva on Thursday set the target of reaching all the other besieged areas in the next week.

Source: New York Times, February 19, 2016