Aid convoys head toward besieged Syria cities

Aid convoys arranged by local and worldwide organisations have reached three besieged towns in Syria, where thousands are trapped and some have died of starvation.

Up to 400,000 people in 15 besieged locations of Syria do not have access to the aid they desperately need, according to the United Nations, and in the past year, only 10 percent of all requests to access these areas were approved, followed by deliveries.

Madaya is part of a six-month U.N.-brokered truce that also includes the nearby rebel-held town of Zabadani, and Al-Foua and Kefraya, two government-controlled towns in Syria’s northwest.

Worldwide relief agencies have delivered aid to the besieged Syrian town of Madaya where as many as 28 people are reported to have died of starvation.

After a last-minute flurry of negotiations as the convoys idled at the entrances to the towns, trucks and SUVs began rolling in, Pawel Krzysiek, a spokesman for the Syria branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said by text message from Madaya.

Krzysiek said upon his arrival, “The people… were coming every five minutes asking, ‘listen did you bring food, did you bring medicine?’ Some are smiling and waving at us but many are just simply too weak, with a very bleak expression, too exhausted”.

File: An image of a starving child in Madaya, Syria, a city that has been under siege by pro-government forces for six months. Opposition activists and aid groups have reported several deaths from starvation in recent weeks.

The council met to discuss the situation in Madaya where residents told AFP they had resorted to eating grass and killing cats for meat to survive.

“Syrians are suffering and dying across the country because starvation is being used as a weapon of war by both the Syrian government and armed groups”, said an Amnesty International spokesperson.

Another large-scale operation to deliver wheat, flour, medical supplies and non-food items to those areas will be completed on Thursday, El Hillo said.

He added: “If they are not evacuated tonight, the situation will be more than dramatic tomorrow”. 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. “We would give them money and they would let us bring food into Madaya”. It is not what you see when you arrive with a convoy.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S.is pressing “all parties” on humanitarian access to Madaya.

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.

Critics accuse the Assad government of systematically depriving opponents of food as a weapon of war, and they also criticize the United Nations for regularly attempting to negotiate an end to such sieges rather than unequivocally calling on the Syrian leader to permit the unrestricted flow of humanitarian aid. “I have four young children who haven’t had milk and food for seven months”.

Peter Wilson, Britain’s deputy United Nations ambassador, said in NY it was “good news that those convoys are getting through, although it’s little and it’s late”.

In Fuaa and Kafraya, the rebels who have been responsible for sieges that left people there in need of urgent help.

The U.N.’s World Food Program says the food bound for Madaya will feed about 40,000 residents for a month.