By Robert Evans

GENEVA, July 25 (Reuters). United Nations humanitarian agencies said on Tuesday they were still largely blocked from bringing relief supplies into Lebanon and from getting injured and chronically sick people to hospitals.

The agencies spoke just before Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his government would allow aid airlifts through its air and sea blockade to its northern neighbour.

But the first reaction was that the Israeli move did little to solve the immediate humanitarian crisis.

"It is enormously frustrating to be right on the back doorstep of Lebanon and ready to move in with hundreds of tonnes of aid, but the door remains closed", spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis of the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) told a news briefing.

And the World Health Organisation (WHO) said hospitals in the south were running out of medicines and fuel for the generators that they have been forced to use since Israeli bombing cut off normal power supplies.

The agencies said the situation for civilians was getting worse by the day in southern Lebanon - where Israel has been attacking the Islamic Hizbollah militia for nearly two weeks - and in temporary shelters for people who have fled the area.

The UNHCR's Pagonis said supplies for 20,000 packed into parks or public buildings in and around Beirut "are still blocked in Syria, waiting a safe route into Lebanon".

Humanitarian officials and reports from the region say Israeli planes have bombed roads and destroyed bridges on roads from the Syrian border - apparently in an effort to stop fresh weapon supplies reaching the Hizbollah.

MATTER OF HOURS

"We have urgently needed tents, mattresses, blankets and other aid which would be delivered in only a matter of hours if only we had access to the country", said Pagonis.

Olmert's announcement of an air lift and a linked offer of a humanitarian corridor from Israel itself came after talks in Jerusalem with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Top U.N. officials and independent humanitarian bodies have been calling on Israel for days to guarantee the security of aid convoys to heavily bombed areas of the south.

But, asked later for comment on the Israeli move, Pagonis said it did not appear "to address the immediate situation we are confronted with right now" - the absence of safe passage authorisation for the supplies waiting in Syria.

And another U.N. source said a route through Israel would take much longer to organise and greatly delay the arrival of urgently needed food, medical supplies and relief equipment.

In a separate telephone news conference, officials of the WHO in Geneva and Beirut said they were also having problems in moving around in Lebanon.

"A big problem is access, to bring first aid and to get supplies to hospitals", WHO representative in Lebanon Jaouad Mahjour said on a radio-telephone link from Beirut. "Another big problem is evacuating the injured".

Reuters AlertNet

Enlaces sobre Direitos Humanos