Aid convoy heads to besieged Syrian town amid starvation fears
Aid convoys are en route to the besieged Syrian town of Madaya where thousands are trapped and the United Nations says people are reported to have died of starvation. (Reuters)
Aid convoys are en route to the besieged Syrian town of Madaya where thousands are trapped and the United Nations says people are reported to have died of starvation. (Reuters)
By Hugh Naylor and Suzan Haidamous-January 11BEIRUT — A convoy carrying desperately needed food aid reached a besieged Syrian on Monday as part of a U.N-backed agreement to bring relief to people believed to be facing starvation.
Several dozen vehicles bringing food and medical supplies left the Syrian capital, Damascus, for Madaya, a town near the Lebanese border cut off by Syrian forces. The first vehicles rolled into the town hours later.
“We have close to 50 trucks and we are heading to Madaya now,” said Pawel Krzysiek, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, who was traveling with the convoy.
Since July, Madaya residents have faced a punishing blockade by Syrian government forces and allied fighters from Lebanon’s powerful Shiite Hezbollah militia. Images on social media purport to show emaciated residents saying that they have resorted to eating grass and household pets.
Aid groups say about two-dozen people, including children, have died from starvation in Madaya, a pro-rebellion town about 15 miles west of Damascus, but a longer journey by road.
The Britain-based branch of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said that five people in Madaya, including a 9-year-old boy, died of starvation on Sunday.
The agreement — brokered last week with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — comes amid wider efforts to open peace talks to end the nearly five-year conflict in Syria. The U.N.’s World Food Program says the food bound for Madaya will feed about 40,000 residents for a month.
Krzysiek, the ICRC spokesman, said the agreement also involves about 20 trucks containing food and medicine that were dispatched Monday to Fua and Kefraya, pro-government villages in northwestern Syria where residents have faced a siege imposed by anti-Assad rebels.
Another agreement last summer was supposed to end fighting in Madaya and other villages, including Fua and Kefraya. The pact also stipulated food aid to civilians Madaya.
But only one shipment last October had reached them.
Such blockades are common in Syria’s civil war, which has led to more than 250,000 deaths and displaced millions of 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 unrestricted flow of humanitarian aid.
Rebels forces also face accusation of denying food to besieged areas.
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Hugh Naylor is a Beirut-based correspondent for The Post. He has reported from over a dozen countries in the Middle East for such publications as The National, an Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, and The New York Times.
