Killing of Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer condemned
IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency
Tehran, June 26, IRNA -- A volunteer for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Bashar al-Youssef, was shot and killed Monday in Deir Ezzor, in eastern Syria. This is the fourth time since last September that a member of the Red Crescent has been killed while on duty.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) strongly condemn the shooting, further evidence of an extremely disturbing disregard for life-saving medical services in Syria. "We are shocked by Bashar’s death," said Dr Abdul Rahman al-Attar, the president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. "It is completely unacceptable."
"This comes at a time when the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are virtually the only organizations able to work in areas affected by the violence in Syria," said Alexandre Equey, the deputy head of the ICRC's delegation in Syria. "We take such incidents extremely seriously."
Al-Youssef was twenty-three years old. He was shot while on first-aid duty and succumbed to his wounds a few hours later. It must be noted that he was wearing a uniform clearly marked with the red crescent emblem, a news release issued by the ICRC said.
This is the fourth killing of this kind since September 2011. On 24 April, a first-aid responder was shot and killed in the city of Douma. On 25 January, the secretary-general of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, and president of its Idlib branch, was killed. In September 2011, a volunteer died when a Red Crescent ambulance was struck by bullets.
Since the beginning of the year, the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent have assisted some 400,000 people in dire need of life-saving aid, in some of the most hard-hit areas in Syria.
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Islamic Republic News Agency/IRNA NewsCode: 1021716
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