SYRIAN authorities have described the United States’ claim of a partial and temporary suspension of some of its sanctions against the country as “misleading and false.”

On Thursday, the US Treasury Department said that a 180-day licence would authorise “all transactions related to earthquake relief that would be otherwise prohibited” by the nation’s sanctions on Syria.

It came after denials by state officials that its restrictions would not have an impact on humanitarian aid for the disaster, which has killed more than 3,500 people in the country.

The Syrian Foreign Affairs Ministry said that the announcement is a copy of a previous document that only seeks to create a “false impression by stipulating alleged exemptions for humanitarian purposes.”

“The facts on the ground, however, prove otherwise,” it said in a statement, noting that Washington still upholds its arbitrary sanctions.

The department’s decision only tries to hide that the country is responsible for “obstructing efforts to rescue those affected by the earthquake and meet the basic needs of the Syrian people,” it added.

United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs Martin Griffiths, visiting the Turkish-Syrian border earlier today, said in a statement that Syrians have been left “looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.”

“We have so far failed the people in north-west Syria. They rightly feel abandoned,” he said.

“My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”

The first UN convoy to reach north-west Syria from Turkey was on Thursday, three days after the earthquake.