UN agency: Starving Syrian teen died ‘in front of our eyes’
(35 minutes later)
BEIRUT — In a story Jan. 14 about humanitarian aid entering Madaya, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Care International was among aid organizations entering the Syrian town. CARE International is not entering Madaya, but is working with Syrian partners in other besieged communities in Syria.
BEIRUT — The U.N. children’s agency said Friday that it witnessed the death of a teenager who died of starvation “in front of our eyes,” as well as several cases of severe malnutrition among children trapped in a besieged Syrian town near Damascus.
A corrected version of the story is below:
Hanaa Singer, UNICEF’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the 16-year-old, identified as Ali, died of malnutrition on Thursday in a clinic in the town of Madaya.
UN chief says deliberate starvation in Syria is a war crime
Trucks from the U.N. and other humanitarian organizations entered Madaya on Thursday for the second time in a week after reports of starvation deaths. The town has been under siege for months by government forces.
UN chief says deliberate starvation in Syria is a war crime as new aid reaches besieged communities
Two other communities, the villages of Foua and Kfarya in northern Syria, besieged by Syrian rebels were also included in the aid operation.
By ZEINA KARAM
The death of the teenager as international aid workers were inside Madaya reinforced the scale of the humanitarian catastrophe in the town and other besieged areas.
Associated Press
The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to hold an emergency meeting Friday at the request of Western countries trying to press Syria’s warring parties to lift sieges on towns where hundreds of thousands have been cut off from aid and many are starving.
BEIRUT — Trucks carrying humanitarian aid on Thursday entered a rebel-held town besieged by government troops for the second time this week, following reports of starvation, grave deprivation and illness among trapped residents which the U.N. chief described as a “war crime.”
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who called the deliberate starvation of civilians a “war crime,” also stepped up the pressure, calling Thursday for both the Syrian government and rebels to end the sieges before the commencement of peace talks scheduled for Jan. 25 in Geneva.
The operation, in which aid also entered two villages in northern Syria besieged by the rebels, is part of an effort to alleviate civilian suffering in cut-off areas of the war-torn country.
Ban said the United Nations and its humanitarian partners are able to deliver food to only 1 percent of the 400,000 people under siege in Syria, down from 5 percent just over a year ago.
A convoy of 44 trucks from the U.N. World Food Program, International Committee for the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent had headed in the morning to the rebel-held town of Madaya from the Syrian capital, Damascus. A similar aid convoy of 17 trucks drove to the villages of Foua and Kfarya, in the northern province of Idlib, which have been besieged by the Syrian rebels.
Juliette Touma, an Amman-based UNICEF representative, said the agency’s staff who spent close to seven hours in Madaya Thursday are “terribly shocked.”
In the evening, six trucks entered Madaya, while three trucks entered Foua and Kfarya simultaneously, according to the U.N.-supported agreement.
Her staff saw “pretty horrific scenes” of malnourishment, including among women, children and the elderly, she told The Associated Press.
Madaya, a former mountain resort near the Lebanon border, has been under siege for months by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. The trucks carry wheat, flour, cleaning materials and some medical supplies.
She added, however, that many felt relief at finally arriving at these hard-to-reach areas. “It is important right now to maintain this humanitarian access ... There are 14 other Madayas,” she said.
The Madaya convoy also included a nutritionist and health teams to assess the humanitarian situation, said Tarek Wheibi, spokesperson for the ICRC in Beirut.
Singer, in the statement, said that at the makeshift hospital UNICEF visited in the town, there were only two doctors and two health professionals working under overwhelming conditions.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday that those responsible for the deliberate starvation of Madaya’s townspeople must face justice.
Meanwhile Russia, which has been conducting airstrikes in Syria to support its Syrian army allies, said that Russian airplanes dropped 22 metric tons of humanitarian cargo over the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, which has been besieged by the Islamic State group for a year.
“The town has been the victim of deliberate starvation. Let me be clear: the use of food as a weapon of war is a war crime. All sides, including the Syrian Government, which has the primary responsibility to protect Syrians — are committing atrocious acts prohibited under international humanitarian law,” he said in a speech before the U.N. General Assembly.
The city is contested, with IS controlling most of the territory but the Syrian government holding some neighborhoods.
“Combatants have showed complete and utter disregard for Madaya’s people,” Ban added.
The Russian defense ministry did not say when, or in which part of the city, the aid drop occurred. But the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition activist group that monitors both sides of the conflict, said the aid was parachuted over neighborhoods controlled by government forces.
The U.N. has said that 400 people in Madaya are in need of immediate medical evacuation, but Ban asked what about those who would be left behind.
Lt.-Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military’s General Staff said that to date most of the aid delivered by international groups had been sent to areas under the rebel control and most of it had fallen into the hands of extremists.
“They can eat today but they fear another stretch of months in destitution if the combatants renew the siege,” the U.N. chief warned.
As of Thursday, there were no reports of any evacuations from the area.
Among aid organizations entering Madaya is SOS Children’s Villages, an international organization dedicated to the care of orphaned, abandoned and other vulnerable children.
Abeer Pamuk, communications adviser for the group who traveled 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.”
Reports of starvation have drawn international attention to Madaya, where an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 people are thought to be trapped without food, electricity, and other basic supplies.
Officials who travelled to the town with the first aid convoy on Monday reported “heartbreaking” and nightmarish scenes they said were the worst they had seen in Syria.
In a statement UNICEF and WHO said Thursday that their teams met distressed and hungry children - some of them severely malnourished, along with adults in a similar condition during their visit Monday.
“The town’s population of 40,000 is being served by only two doctors, with a limited capacity to save the lives of civilians. Health and medical services including immunization are collapsing,” the statement said.
A similar humanitarian crisis was reported in Foua and Kfraya. The U.N. says around 15 municipalities are under siege in Syria, in contravention of international law.
The U.N. 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 supplies.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has called on all parties to end the sieges on Madaya, Foua, and Kfarya.
“We think there is a window of opportunity to make a significant step forward to lift all the sieges,” said Dominik Stillhart, Director of Operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Speaking to U.N. correspondents in New York, he said flour was being delivered to the three villages today and that the convoys would be returning on Sunday with fuel.
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Associated Press writers Edith M. Lederer and Alexandra Olson at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Associated Press writer Philip Issa in Beirut, Katherine Jacobsen and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this story.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
