The UN aims to build local ceasefires and humanitarian operations across the country as part of worldwide peace talks between the regime and rebels scheduled for the end of January. They were skinny, tired, severely distressed.
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Both sides of the conflict – the gunmen controlling Madaya and also the government forces besieging the town – bear the responsibility for the lives of citizens, who need treatment for medical conditions, malnourishment and starvation, he said.
The World Health Organization’s representative for Syria said Tuesday she is hopeful the government will grant the agency’s request to send teams to the besieged town of Madaya to assess the level of malnutrition and set up medical aid.
“I feel like someone who is drowning and finds a small wooden stick”, she said in a telephone interview, adding that some people were too weak to walk to the distribution point and that she was anxious that if the aid took a day to distribute, some could die in the interim.
“It’s not progress on the political front or progress on the humanitarian front”. The town has been the frequent target of the Syrian army and its ally, the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.
The Syrian Ambassador told reporters the pictures of staving people were “fabrications”.
It was reported that the sight of food trucks brought starving residents to tears.
“It has a special product already… which we renewed a year ago 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.
Madaya residents on the outskirts of the town said they wanted to leave. “For 15 days we have been eating only soup”, she said.
Syrian government forces and their allies deny blockading Madaya, but that is simply false, Jassem says. The aid operation, which is being facilitated by the United Nations, was agreed on last week.
More than two dozen people have reportedly starved to death in Madaya, which received its first aid delivery of food and medicine on Monday after a six-month government siege.
“If they are not evacuated tonight the situation will be more than dramatic tomorrow” he said. In interviews, they accused rebel fighters inside of hoarding humanitarian assistance that entered the town in October and selling the supplies to residents at exorbitant prices.
Ms Ghosn also blamed rebels in Madaya, saying: “Their depots are full while we go hungry”.
He had travelled to Madaya on Monday with the UN’s aid convoy, and expressed shock at the devastation in the town. Unloading was expected to last through the night, he said on Twitter.
Western diplomats have condemned the use of food as a weapon of war, with the US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, accusing the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of “grotesque starve-or-surrender tactics”.
The World Food Programme said the aid carried on the Madaya convoy will meet the needs of 40,000 people for one month.
A group of eight major global aid groups, including CARE worldwide, Oxfam, and Save the Children, welcomed the aid convoy but warned that a one-time delivery would not save starving people. “A one-off humanitarian visit and then a return to siege-starvation will not be acceptable”, the statement said.
United Nations officials said it was too early to determine whether anyone had died of hunger.
The trucks are part of a 49-vehicle convoy.
“Around 400 people have been identified who must be evacuated immediately”.
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There are at least 42,000 people trapped in the town, according to the UN.
