Syria’s Assad says quake response demands outstrip government resources

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the scale of last week’s deadly earthquake demanded more resources than what the Syrian state had available to it and thanked states that had provided aid in its aftermath, including “Arab brothers and friends”.

“The scale of the disaster and the duties we must undertake are much greater than available resources,” Assad said, in his first televised address since the earthquake in the dead of night on Monday.

The devastating earthquake has led to a thaw in relations between Assad and his Arab neighbours. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi spoke to Assad over the phone for the first time.

The first Saudi plane in a decade landed in Syria’s government-held areas to deliver aid this week. And Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, arrived in Damascus on Wednesday in the first such high-level visit to Syria since Damascus violently cracked down on protests in 2011.