After the tragic loss of at least 3,500 lives in quake-hit Syria, the United States announced a temporary easing of sanctions on the war-torn country.

It came four days after the strong earthquakes rocked on Monday, missing the Golden 72 hours for rescue. The sanctions led to a severe humanitarian crisis for the Syrian people.

Urgent humanitarian crisis

As of Sunday night local time, at least 3,500 people were killed in both the government-control and rebel-held areas, according to the Syrian government and aid agencies.

The earthquake hit Aleppo, Latakia, Tartous, and Hama in northern Syria and the rebel-held Idlib province.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued Syria General License 23, which, according to its announcement, "authorizes for 180 days all transactions related to earthquake relief that would be otherwise prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations."

Thuraya al-Saeedi, a displaced Syrian living at the Sarada camp in southern Lebanon, who lost four of her relatives in Aleppo, said the U.S. decision comes too late.

Syria's Health Minister Hassan al-Ghabbash noted that the suffering of Syria's medical sector is not a result of the recent massive earthquakes that hit the country on Monday but rather the Western sanctions imposed on Syria for 12 years.

"Due to a lack of tools, some rescuers had to dig through the rubble with bare hands in search of survivors in snow and rain," said Muhammad Hijazi, chairman of the Aleppo Governorate Council.

International pressure

On Thursday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres announced that "the humanitarian crisis in northwestern Syria was already worsening, with needs at their highest level since the conflict began."

He stressed, "this is a moment in which everybody must make very clear that no sanctions of any kind interfere with relief to the population of Syria in the present moment."

For his part, Geir Pedersen, UN special envoy for Syria, said that "emergency response must not be politicized." On Thursday, the first UN aid convoy crossed from Türkiye to Syria's northwestern Idlib province.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Wednesday demanded an immediate lifting of U.S. sanctions on Syria as the tremor-stricken country is facing a severe humanitarian crisis.

"Even today, U.S. troops still occupy Syria's principal oil fields, plunder more than 80 percent of the country's oil production, and have smuggled and burned Syria's grain stock, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis there," said Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian deplored the U.S. sanctions on Syria, saying they have exacerbated the situation of the quake-hit people in the Arab country.

Wasel Abu Youssef, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee, said the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria requires an end to "collective punishment, especially the Caesar Act imposed by the United States," adding the U.S. sanctions on Syria "have no justification for their continuation."

The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, also known as the Caesar Act, is a piece of U.S. legislation that sanctions the Syrian president and government over what Washington claimed to be "war crimes against the Syrian people." The act was signed into law by former U.S. President Donald Trump in late 2019 and came into effect in mid-2020.