“We are suffering from anemia and many other diseases”, an unnamed resident who managed to leave Madaya told BBC News, before adding: “We have no food, even bread. Or they are in grave peril of losing their lives and dying with either the causes being from malnutrition or for complications for other medical reasons”, he said.
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Krzysiek said a little girl approached him and asked: “Did you bring food… because we are really hungry… and she looked hungry”. “We sought food from the fighters but they refused to give it to us”.
The operation marked a small, positive development in a bitter conflict now in its fifth year that has killed a quarter of a million people, displaced millions of others and left the country in ruins. “It can’t be just a one-off situation”.
Ja’afari accused Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey of raising the humanitarian issue and “defaming” and “demonizing” the Syrian government in order to torpedo the Geneva talks because “they are not in favor of a political settlement”.
Madaya, which is near Syria’s border with Lebanon, is controlled by rebel groups and has been subjected to a blockade for months by government forces and their allies in Hezbollah, the Shiite militia group from Lebanon. In the meantime, rebels fighting the Syrian government have circled two villages in Idlib province. There are hundreds of thousands of people being deliberately besieged, deliberately starved, right now.
He says some of the humanitarian aid previously sent to Syria was looted by opposition and terrorist groups operating in the country.
Stephen O’Brien, OCHA Under-Secretary-General: “On all the evidence that we have seen and which we can place reliability there has been very severe malnourishment, there’s severe shortages of food and we have reports of people who are either starving or indeed have starved and died”.
He had travelled to Madaya on Monday with the UN’s aid convoy, and expressed shock at the devastation in the town.
Hezbollah has said rebels in the town had taken control of aid, which they were selling to those who could buy.
Amid the total collapse of health services in the town, WHO said it wants to deploy mobile health clinics to Madaya.
Residents told United Nations staff that a main source of food in recent weeks had been a soup made of grass boiled with the few available spices.
The aid operation was agreed on last week.
If they were not evacuated immediately, “the situation will be more than dramatic tomorrow”, he said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based SOHR, told Arab media that 49 aid trucks are heading to the opposition town of Madaya and 21 others are heading to the government towns of Kafraya and Foua.
Rebel forces also face accusations of denying food to besieged areas.
Relieved residents of Madaya – which has been encircled by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces for six months…said they had resorted to extreme measures to survive. An estimated 20,000 people have been trapped there since March.
The medical charity MSF says 28 people have starved to death since December 1.
“Only a complete end to the six-month-old siege and guarantees for sustained aid deliveries alongside humanitarian services will alleviate the crisis in these areas”, a statement by the group said.
“Around 400 are in need of being evacuated for life-saving medical attention”, O’Brien said in NY.
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The UN is struggling to deliver aid to about 4.5 million Syrians in hard-to-reach areas, including almost 400,000 people in 15 besieged areas.
