Turkey-Syria earthquake: First aid convoy reaches opposition-held Idlib

The first convoy of UN aid for opposition-held north-west Syria since Monday's huge earthquake has reportedly crossed into the region from Turkey.

Officials said six lorries carrying hygiene kits and other items had gone through Idlib's Bab al-Hawa crossing.

The shipment had been due before the disaster, which caused damage to roads and temporarily halted deliveries.

Rescuers there say at least 1,900 people have been killed and that many more are trapped under destroyed homes.

Even before the earthquake struck, 4.1 million residents - most of them women and children - were relying on humanitarian assistance to survive.

Bab al-Hawa is the only border crossing that the UN is permitted to use to deliver aid to the region, which is controlled by a jihadist alliance and Turkish-backed rebel factions opposed to President Bashar al-Assad's government.

All other deliveries are meant to go via Damascus, although in the past the government has facilitated only a small amount of so-called "cross-line" aid.

Earlier on Thursday, the UN special envoy for Syria said earthquake-affected regions of the country had received "nowhere near enough" lifesaving aid and warned that assistance must not be "politicised".

"We need it urgently through the fastest, most direct and most effective routes. They need more of absolutely everything," Geir Pedersen told reporters in Geneva.

He was speaking after a meeting of the UN's humanitarian task force for Syria, which includes Russia and Iran, whose forces have backed the Syrian government in the country's 12-year civil war, as well as Turkey, the United States and the European Union, which support the opposition.

Some aid from Iran, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Egypt, India and Venezuela has already reached government-held areas of northern Syria, where the health ministry says at least 1,250 people have been killed.