Red Cross chief says aid group trying to reach out to IS

Citing his group’s ‘radically neutral’ humanitarian mission, Yves Daccord laments lack of access to Islamic State-controlled areas

By AP 7 December 2015, 11:06 pm

Edit

Yves Daccord, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, at the third Humanitarian Congress 2015 in Vienna, Austria, on March 6, 2015. (Wikipedia/Markus Hechenberger/CC BY-SA 4.0)

The director general of the International Committee of the Red Cross said the organization is trying to reach out to the Islamic State group to help get humanitarian aid to people in areas under its control.

Yves Daccord made the comments to The Associated Press at Monday’s start to a major gathering of the Red Cross and Red Crescent held every four years.

The conference in Geneva aims partly to reinforce international humanitarian law now under threat in conflict zones like Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Daccord said the Red Cross is a “radically neutral” organization trying to have “a relationship where we can do it” with the Islamic State group.

He said it’s very difficult in Syria because some IS-controlled areas “are pretty off-limits for any humanitarian.”

Also Monday, the US-led Combined Joint Task Force coordinating coalition activities against IS said the alliance carried out airstrikes in the province where Syria accuses it of hitting government troops, but that there is no indication it hit any Syrian soldiers.

The task force said in a statement that it carried out four airstrikes solely against oil well heads in Deir el-Zour province on Sunday, all of them some 55 kilometers (34 miles) southeast of Ayyash.

The Syrian government said nine missiles fired by coalition aircraft on a Syrian army camp in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour killed three soldiers and wounded 13.

The coalition, however, said it “did not strike any vehicles or personnel targets in this area. We have no indication any Syrian soldiers were even near our strikes.”