Donors pledged more than $1 billion at an
international aid conference in Kuwait on Wednesday for Syrians displaced by nearly two years of fighting, a Kuwaiti minister said in remarks carried by the state news agency KUNA.
Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah al-Mubarak al-Sabah told reporters he hoped the total pledges would reach the target of $1.5 billion set by the United Nations by the end of the meeting later in the day.
For his part, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the donor countries have pledged more than $1.5 billion for Syrians displaced.
Ban told the final session of the one-day conference that the meeting has "reached its target" of $1 billion of aid for Syria's neighbors hosting refugees and another $500 million to fund humanitarian work for 4 million Syrians afflicted by the civil war inside the country.
Ban commented on the Syrian crisis and said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has a primary responsibility to stop the suffering of his country's people and should listen to their cries. "We cannot go on like this. What is more important is that the primary responsibility rests with the Syrian government, with President Assad, he should listen to the voices and cries of so many people," he stated.
Earlier, Syrian state media blamed the
Islamist rebel Nusra Front for the killing of dozens of people in the northern
city of Aleppo, contradicting activist accounts which blamed President Bashar
al-Assad's forces for the bloodshed.
The victims' families "have
identified a number of the killed, stressing that the Nusra Front abducted them
because of their refusal to cooperate with this terrorist group," state
news agency SANA said.
Opposition campaigners said
Assad's forces had committed a massacre on Tuesday after at least 65 people
were found shot dead with their hands bound alongside the Queiq River in
Aleppo's rebel-held Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood.
They posted a video of at least
51 muddied male bodies, with what looked like bullet wounds in their heads. The
activists said the men had been executed and dumped in the river before
floating downstream into the rebel area.
SANA's reporter said the water
level in the river was too low to carry the bodies any distance suggesting they
had been killed in the rebel-controlled area.
Syria restricts access to
independent media, making it difficult to verify accounts from activists and
officials.
Separately, Syrian oppositions leader Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib said that he is "ready to hold talks with regime representatives in Cairo or Tunisia or Istanbul if 160,000 detainees are released."
REUTERS