Red Cross asks for record $212m for Syria emergency appeal

The Red Cross has made an emergency appeal, on Thursday, asking for a record budget to help Syrians affected by the bloody civil war.

"The scale of the conflict in Syria is unprecedented, and the stark truth is that there is no end in sight," said Robert Mardini, who heads Near and Middle East operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

"The bleak reality is that the needs are growing at a much faster pace than the humanitarian aid being provided on the ground," he told reporters in Geneva.

According to Mardini, the ICRC needs $212m this year - $84m more than previously estimated - to help address the needs of Syrians both inside the country and in the surrounding region.

Such a well-funded response would be the largest since the 1990s operations in the Balkan wars.

Some 150,000 people have been killed during the past three years of civil war and half the country's population has been forced to flee their homes, including the nearly three million refugees who have flooded into neighbouring countries.

Mardini acknowledged that regardless of how much aid his organisation or others poured into helping those affected, "it is simply not enough and does not match the sheer size of the needs."

"No words or qualifiers can do justice to what is happening in Syria today," he said.

The sheer scale of the conflict has generally overwhelmed international aid agencies which have been left struggling to cope.

In December last year, the UN asked international donors for $6.5bn to help in the relief efforts although

In April of this year, the UN food agency was forced to reduce many food rations for lack of funds.

Back in January donor countries pledged $2.3bn for aid agencies at a conference in Kuwait, but as of last month only $1.1bn has been delivered.

Most of the ICRC cash request - $157m of it - is meant to go to the organisation's activities inside the war-torn country, while the remainder will go to aid operations in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq.

However, even if the demands for funding are met, aid agencies admit they will face huge challenges in delivering the supplies to civilians.

The Assad regime has been slammed for not allowing aid access to some rebel-held areas, while the harsh security situation has prevented delivery to other parts of the county.

"Our priority is clearly Aleppo,” Mardini said, while stressing that the ICRC and other organisations were trying their upmost to gain access to these war-torn and isolated areas.”

“We have a very substantial plan of response for Aleppo, that would include medical, surgical aid, food and non-food items," Mardini said. He also admitted that the ICRC teams were still waiting for approval from Damascus before deploying to contested parts of the country.