The first United Nations aid flight from Iraq to Syria took off on Sunday after being delayed for several days due to bad weather, an AFP journalist said.

The plane departed the Erbil airport in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region around 3:30 pm (1230 GMT), and was expected to arrive in Qamishli in Syrian Kurdistan [northeastern Syria] some 40 minutes later.

"Over the next few days, we will be sending to Qamishli... 400 tonnes of food," Abeer Etefa, senior Middle East spokeswoman for the UN World Food Programme, told AFP.

The flight on Sunday was carrying about 40 metric tonnes of aid, Etefa said.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and children's agency UNICEF were also to send aid into Syria via air.

The airlift, which has the go-ahead from both the Syrian and Iraqi governments, had been expected to begin on Thursday, but was delayed by a storm that shuttered the airport in the Kurdish city of Qamishli.