Red Cross: Aid convoys depart for besieged Syrian town, villages

Syria’s ambassador to the UN, Bashar Jaafari, said on Monday that there was “no starvation in Madaya” after the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said 28 people in the town had starved to death.

Tales of hunger and hardship have emerged from those inside all three communities: Pro-government fighters recently evacuated from inside Foua and Kfarya have said some residents are eating grass to survive.

The suffering in the Syrian town of Madaya is the worst seen in the country’s war, the United Nations said on Tuesday, a day after delivering aid to the area besieged for months. A convoy with enough basic food to last 40,000 people a month is one of three which left Damascus after an agreement between the warring sides.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said 44 trucks loaded with food and other aid entered the rebel-held town late afternoon, while 21 other trucks entered the government-controlled towns of Fuaa and Kafraya.

Dozens of aid trucks headed on Monday to the besieged rebel-held Syrian town of Madaya, where more than two dozen people are reported to have starved to death.

New Zealand’s permanent representative to the United Nations – called a Security Council meeting today to discuss reports of people dying of starvation.

“Madaya is now effectively an open-air prison for an estimated 20,000 people, including infants, children, and elderly”, Doctors Without Borders Director of Operations Brice de le Vingne said in a statement by the organization last week.

The UN says 4.5 million Syrians are living in besieged or hard-to-reach areas and desperately need humanitarian aid, with civilians prevented from leaving and aid workers blocked from bringing in food, medicine, fuel and other essentials. He added that some 400 people there were in dire need of medical evacuation. In one video posted by Syrian activists, a skeletal boy – his ribs protruding – says he hasn’t eaten a full meal in seven days. “Some are smiling and waving at us but many are just simply too weak, with a very bleak expression, too exhausted”, he said in an audio message.

Government forces are besieging various locations in the eastern Ghouta area, outside Damascus, as well as the capital’s western suburb of Darayya and the nearby mountain towns of Zabadani and Madaya.

Permission for secure access must come from “all the parties who govern any of the routes that need to be deployed, either for the ambulances or for any kind of air rescue”, said O’Brien.

“France solemnly calls for the immediate and effective lifting of sieges of all those cities for an unlimited humanitarian access and a stop to the indiscriminate attacks against civilians”.

The UN aims to build local ceasefires and humanitarian operations across the country as part of global peace talks between the regime and rebels scheduled for the end of January.

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said “starving civilians is an inhuman tactic used by the (President Bashar) al-Assad regime and their allies”.

“The Syrian government has demanded our support against terrorism and we, anyway, stood alongside Assad, who enjoys his people’s support”, he said.

A convoy consisting of Red Cross, Red Crescent and United Nation gather before heading towards to Madaya from Damascus, and to al Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, Syria on January 11, 2016.

More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in nearly five years of conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a brutal civil war.