U.S. boosts Syrian humanitarian aid with $155 million donation

Washington, DC, United States (4E) – President Barack Obama announced Tuesday an additional $155 million in humanitarian assistance for Syrian refugees and civil war victims.

Obama said on a video that the money will be used to buy clothing and tents for Syrians left homeless and without food and medicine to tide them over the winter. It will also be used for the health care of victims of sexual violence and for the wounded in field hospitals.

The $155 million is on top of the $210 million the U.S. has pledged for the United Nations-sponsored donors conference planned in Kuwait on Wednesday. The UN hopes to raise $1,5 billion in donation to help 4 million Syrians in the country and 700,000 in refugee camps outside Syria.

Syrians continue to flee to Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey to escape the 22-month-old civil war that has claimed 60,000 lives.

Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford will join representatives of more than 50 nations in a meeting in Paris on Tuesday. The meeting will discuss the Syria civil war.

Ford said the U.S. will not intervene in the civil war and will leave to Syrians how they can “fix” their problem.

In Syria, at least 80 bodies of young men and boys were found in a river in the city of Aleppo, according to London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The unidentified victims, whose bodies were being recovered from the Quweiq River Tuesday, have gunshot wounds in the head and neck indicating they were executed.

The rebels and Syria’s military blamed each other for the mass killing. A pro-regime official said the victims were kidnapped by rebels before they were killed. A rebel fighter said the opposite happened.

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