Beijing, Mar 18: China on Tuesday said it will provide emergency humanitarian assistance to Iran, Lebanon and two other West Asian countries hit hard by the ongoing conflict in the region.
Speaking at a media briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that Beijing has decided to provide emergency humanitarian aid to Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq in the hope of easing the humanitarian plight faced by local people.
“The ongoing conflict has inflicted excruciating humanitarian disasters on (the) people of Iran and other regional countries. China deeply sympathises with people in relevant countries”, Lin said.
He was responding to a question about whether China is considering providing humanitarian assistance to the relevant countries, as the UN Refugee Agency recently said the crisis in West Asia has constituted a major humanitarian emergency, and the affected regions already host nearly 25 million refugees, internally displaced persons and returnees.
Iran has suffered many innocent civilian casualties; about 800,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced; Jordan, Iraq and other countries have also been affected, Lin said.
China will continue to make every effort to promote peace and end the fighting, facilitating the early restoration of regional peace and stability and preventing the further spread of the humanitarian crisis, he added.
Last week, China announced USD 200,000 as emergency humanitarian assistance to the victims killed in the recent bomb attack on an Iranian elementary school in the current US-Israel-Iran conflict.
Since the outbreak of the hostilities with Israel and the US bombing Iran, leading to the death of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, China, a close ally of Tehran, has been calling for an immediate stop to military operations with a ceasefire.