Second aid delivery headed to besieged Syrian communities

Doctors in the town say that people’s average nutritional intake has fallen to 0.5 percent of what is needed, and local aid agencies report that more than 50 people have already died of starvation and lack of medical care.

The request follows this week’s delivery of aid to three besieged Syrian towns including Madaya, where the United Nations reported severe malnutrition and people looking like “skeletons”.

“The humanitarian community stands ready to deliver there in the course of the coming days as soon as it is approved”, spokeswoman Linda Tom said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has called on all parties to end the sieges on Madaya, Foua, and Kfarya.

Ban said both the Syrian government and rebels are committing war crimes by deliberately starving civilians and must face justice.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today that the use of starvation as a weapon in Syria was a war crime after aid workers were able to deliver food to residents in famine-struck Madaya. The trucks were mainly carrying wheat flour and hygiene products.

Abeer Pamuk, communications adviser for the group who travelled to Madaya on Thursday, said immediately on arrival in the town, they saw “an overwhelming amount of people, all were extremely skinny and very pale”.

Ms Tom said OCHA was also advocating putting a medical team inside Madaya to treat people.

After months of negotiations, a second convoy carrying food and other necessities entered Madaya on Thursday where residents told AFP they had been surviving on soup from boiled grass.

The UN said that it and its humanitarian partners are equally concerned about the 400,000 people now living in 15 besieged locations in Syria without access to aid.

Twenty-one others were heading to two Shi’ite villages, al-Foua and Kefraya, surrounded by rebels in the northwest, some 300 km (200 miles) from Madaya. The aid was to enter all three places simultaneously.

However, there appears little immediate prospect of such a case being brought before the worldwide war crimes tribunal in The Hague, since Syria is not a member and any referral to the court by the U.N. Security Council would have to overcome Russian reluctance.

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.

“We do not see Ahrar al-Sham or Jaysh al-Islam as part of the opposition delegation because they are terrorist organizations”.