“We have no food – even bread”. Shortages of food, water, medicine, electricity and fuel have led to malnutrition and deaths among vulnerable groups.
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“It has a special product already… which we renewed past year to deal precisely with this situation and has strengthened language on access to procedures in hard-to-get areas, so we have all the legal requirements needed”, he said.
The U.N.’s World Food Programme has said it will ship one month’s worth of food for more than 40,000 people to Madaya from Damascus, and enough for 20,000 people to Foua and Kfarya from the city of Homs.
“Some people went through garbage bins, others ate grass. We sought food from the fighters but they refused to give it to us”.
The UN humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, warned that “many more will die” unless government forces and rebels lift sieges of towns across the country.
“We need full access and that’s what we agreed on in the ISSG [International Syria Support Group] meeting in NY and the UN Security Council”, he said Monday during a news conference.
“They are in grave peril of losing their lives”.
“Offloading of aid expected to last throughout night”, Pawel Krzysiek, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a tweet.
It said that “200 more malnourished patients could become critical and in need of hospitalisation within a week if aid doesn’t arrive”. “These are just the pictures we see”.
Aid convoys delivered long-awaited food, medicine and other supplies to Madaya and two other besieged villages on Monday after an global outcry at the worsening conditions of civilians trapped by fighting between government and rebel troops.
“It’s ultimately this failed political system, which is the direct result of Bashar al-Assad’s failed leadership, that has led to this problem”, Earnest said.
Trucks bearing the Red Crescent logo were allowed into the town near the Lebanese border as part of an agreement between the warring sides.
“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. But now, the first shipment of foreign aid since October to Madaya has brought the residents to tears at the sight, according to CNN.
The Syria conflict, which will enter its sixth year in early 2016, has left more than 250,000 people dead and turned the country into the world’s largest source of refugees and displaced persons, according to the UN.
“The tactic of siege and starvation is one of the most appalling characteristics of the Syrian conflict”, said New Zealand’s United Nations ambassador, Gerard van Bohemen.
This undated photo posted on the Local Revolutionary Council in Madaya, which has been verified and is consistent with other AP reporting, shows a starving boy in Madaya, Syria.
A United Nations commission of inquiry has said siege warfare has been used “in a ruthlessly coordinated and planned manner” in Syria, with the aim of forcing a population, collectively, to surrender or suffer starvation.
“We have approached the Syrian government, but we still do not have a proper dialogue on [evacuations]”, she said, adding that time was running out for those who were ill.
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Elsewhere in Syria, the Observatory said at least eight children were killed along with their teacher when a Russian air strike hit their school in the west of Aleppo province.
