US to provide $720 million for Syria crisis response

The US will provide over $720 million in humanitarian assistance as part of the crisis response in Syria, Reuters report.

The announcement was made by Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun at an event held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

The funds would go "both for Syrians inside the country and for those in desperate need across the region," Beigun said.

The figure includes more than $419 million from the US agency for International Development's Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance and more than $301 million from the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migrants, Anadolu Agency report.

In a statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the international community "must remain committed to meeting the increasing needs of the Syrian people".

With the latest injection, total US support since the start of the crisis will reach more than $12 billion.

Pompeo added that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was "accountable for its devastating military campaign" and "brutal disregard for human rights, including the arbitrary detention of over 100,000 Syrian civilians, the vast majority of whose whereabouts are currently unknown."

On Wednesday, a UN commission on Syria called for an end to arbitrary and incommunicado detentions, in addition to an international mechanism to coordinate and collection information on those missing, as two of six steps to move forward from the country's bloody war.

Read more: Syrians no safer despite decrease in violence, UN says, as 100,000 detainees remain in missing

Assad launched a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests which erupted in Syria in 2011, leading to a civil war in which Iran and Russia supported the regime and the US backed the opposition.

The war has claimed the lives of 380,000 and left at least 10 million displaced, according to UN estimates.

Speaking via video link during a session of the UN's 45^th Human Rights Council, commissioner Paulo Sergio Pinheiro warned that despite a reduction in violence, Syrians "are still not any safer and continue to suffer gross human rights violations by all actors controlling territory."

Syria is now broadly divided between regime-controlled areas, Kurdish-held territories and areas held by rebels, Islamist groups and Turkish-backed Syrian opposition fighters. 

Agencies contributed to this report.

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