Tag: syria aid
Hunger And Desperation: Aleppo Siege Tests Limits Of Endurance

Hunger And Desperation: Aleppo Siege Tests Limits Of Endurance

AMMAN (Reuters) – As Syria’s government presses a fierce assault on eastern Aleppo, its siege is making life ever harder for civilians who are being forced to sift through garbage for food and scavenge firewood from bombed-out buildings.

With winter setting in, shortages of food, medicine and fuel coupled with intense air strikes and artillery bombardment are testing the limits of endurance among a population the United Nations estimates at 270,000 people.

“People are worn out … there are people today in Aleppo who are eating out of the trash,” said Mustafa Hamami, who lost two of his children and four other relatives when a six-storey apartment building was destroyed this week.

With government forces mounting their most concerted effort yet to capture the rebel-held east, these are the darkest days for the opposition in Aleppo since the beginning of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in 2011.

Backed by Russian air support, the Syrian army and allied Shi’ite militia from Iran, Lebanon and Iraq have gradually blockaded the rebel-held east of the city this year, first cutting the northern lifeline to Turkey and then fully encircling it from the west and south.

Pro-government forces identified as Shi’ite militias by the rebels have in recent days launched a ground attack aiming to split the rebel-controlled territory by seizing areas including Hanano, where fierce battles were underway on Friday.

The fall of eastern Aleppo would be the biggest victory to date for Assad, crushing the rebellion in its most important urban stronghold. Fierce bombardment and air strikes of the area has killed hundreds of people since late September.

BABY FED BOILED RICE

A pack of four bread loaves now costs the equivalent of about $3 – at least five times higher than it was before the siege began in July. The city council offers limited quantities at a subsidized price. A kilo of meat costs $50, a kilo of sugar costs $18, both also several times higher than before the siege.

Rice, which is more readily available and has not risen as much, costs $3 a kilo.

“My wife is using boiled rice to feed our 11-month old baby. We can barely get one bottle of powdered milk a month,” said Abdullah Hanbali, who worked as an engineer before the war.

“People are not accustomed to just eating bread and a bit of rice. They are used to eating apples, cucumbers, lemons, butter, meat,” he said, speaking to Reuters from eastern Aleppo via the internet. “The weather is cold. You need nutrition.”

Residents say once-bustling markets are now devoid of shoppers. The few stalls with food to sell offer legumes, radishes, parsley, and other crops grown within the confines of the besieged area.

The United Nations says the last U.N. rations in Aleppo were distributed on Nov. 13. U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said on Thursday rebel groups had agreed to a plan for aid delivery and medical evacuations, but the United Nations was awaiting approval from Russia and Damascus.

Asked about any “Plan B”, he replied: “In many ways Plan B is that people starve”. He said that could not be allowed to happen.

The government has besieged numerous rebel-held areas of Syria throughout the war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the country has become partitioned into a patchwork of zones controlled by various combatants.

A number of the besieged areas near Damascus have succumbed to the government pressure in recent months, with rebels leaving to the northeastern province of Idlib in negotiated agreements with the government.

The desperation in eastern Aleppo has started to surface.

A brawl erupted last week outside the warehouse of a foreign charity that had been forced to suspend its distribution of food aid parcels as its supplies dried up. Two charity workers said people waiting for food had forced it to hand over all the remaining stock.

NO WORK, INCOME

“None of the charities and NGOs have food parcels to distribute to needy people, and hunger is starting to appear in some families,” said Mohamad Aref Sharifa, a councilor in the opposition-run city council.

“There is dissatisfaction among some civilians, especially in the poorest areas, because there is no work or income and prices are high,” Sharifa added.

The government appears to be hoping that desperation will turn into unrest. The army has called on residents to rise up against rebels it has accused of hoarding food and using civilians as human shields.

But with many residents of eastern Aleppo sympathetic to the opposition and deeply distrustful of Assad, there has been no sign of major unrest targeted at rebel fighters. Many families have relatives fighting with the rebellion.

The commander of one of the biggest rebel groups in eastern Aleppo, the Jabha al-Shamiya, told Reuters this week they planned to set up kitchens in poor neighborhoods to provide residents with at least one meal a day.

“We are also moving toward opening projects to produce methane gas,” added the commander, Abu Abdelrahman Nour.

(This story has been refiled to add dropped word in first paragraph)

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut; Editing by Tom Perry and Pravin Char)

IMAGE: Children collect firewood amid damage and debris at a site hit yesterday by airstrikes in the rebel held al-Shaar neighbourhood of Aleppo, Syria November 17, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail/File Photo

Aid For Syria Stuck With Rising Violence Undermining Truce

Aid For Syria Stuck With Rising Violence Undermining Truce

BEIRUT/CILVEGOZU, Turkey (Reuters) – Aid for the divided Syrian city of Aleppo was stuck on the Turkish border on the fifth day of a fragile ceasefire on Friday with rival factions arguing over how the supplies are to be delivered and violence increasingly undermining the truce.

The provision of aid to what was Syria’s largest city before the war is a critical test of the ceasefire, brokered by the United States and Russia a week ago with the aim of reviving talks on ending the conflict.

Humanitarian access to Aleppo hinges on control of the main road into the besieged rebel-held part of the city, divided between the government and rebels who have been battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad for more than five years. The Castello Road has become a major frontline in the war.

Russia said the Syrian army had begun to withdraw from the road on Thursday, but insurgent groups in Aleppo said they had seen no such move and would not pull back from their own positions around the road until it did so.

“By today this morning nothing had happened on the Castello Road … There is nothing new in Aleppo,” Zakaria Malahifji, of the Aleppo-based rebel group Fastaqim, told Reuters by phone.

The Kremlin said it was using its influence to try to ensure the Syrian army fully implemented the ceasefire and that it hoped the United States would use its own influence with rebel groups too.

“In general, we can still state that the (ceasefire) process is moving forward, despite some setbacks,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.

U.N. FRUSTRATION

Hundreds of protesters from the Shi’ite Muslim villages of Nubul and al Zahra – which lie in government-held territory – were meanwhile heading towards the Castello Road with the aim of blocking it and obstructing the passage of aid trucks, an organization that monitors the war said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said they had come out to prevent aid entering rebel-held eastern Aleppo until there were guarantees that supplies would also be sent to the besieged Shi’ite villages of Kefraya and al-Foua which have been surrounded by insurgents since April 2015.

The United Nations, which says it asked the Syrian government for permission to reach all besieged areas, has voiced increasing frustration in recent days at the failure of the Syrian government to allow access.

“In order to actually initiate the actual movement of these convoys (to besieged areas) we need the facilitation letters. They have not come,” Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. Office of Humanitarian Affairs, told a briefing in Geneva.

“It’s highly frustrating … and of course we urge the authorities and everyone with influence over those authorities to push for these letters to materialize as soon as possible.”

Two convoys of aid have been waiting since early on Tuesday in no-man’s land at the Turkish border for permission to travel into Syria. A U.N. spokesman said the first convoy of trucks was carrying flour for more than 150,000 people, while the second was carrying food rations for 35,000 people for a month.

About 300,000 people are thought to be living in eastern Aleppo, while more than one million live in the government-controlled western half of the city.

TRUCE VIOLATIONS

The government and rebels have accused each other of violating the ceasefire, although the U.S. State Department said on Thursday it was largely holding and that both Washington and Moscow believed it was worth continuing.

The United States and Russia have backed opposing sides in the war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, forced 11 million from their homes, and created the world’s worst refugee crisis since World War Two.

After three days which saw a significant decrease in violence and no deaths, the first civilians since the start of the truce were killed on Thursday.

Three more died and 13 were injured in air strikes in rebel-held Idlib province on Friday, the Observatory said. A number of shells were also fired by insurgents into besieged al-Foua and Kefraya.

A building belonging to the Syrian Civil Defense, a rescue organization also known as the “White Helmets” was also hit in overnight air strikes, the group and the Observatory said.

Violent clashes and shells hit areas east of the Syrian capital Damascus on Friday. Residents in the city center were woken up by a large explosion, a witness said, and shells fell on the eastern gate of Damascus’s central Old City area.

The Britain-based Observatory said the violence stemmed from clashes between insurgents and Syrian government forces and their allies in the Jobar district on the eastern outskirts of the capital amid a government effort to advance in the area.

The Syrian military said rebels had attacked military positions east of the city.

Washington hopes the ceasefire will pave the way to a resumption of political talks. But a similar agreement unraveled earlier this year, and Russia’s intervention a year ago in support of Assad has given it critical leverage over the diplomatic process.

The United States and Russia will brief United Nations Security Council members behind closed doors on Friday, diplomats said, on the deal the pair agreed to try and put Syria’s peace process back on track.

Russia is pushing for the U.N. Security Council to adopt a draft resolution next week endorsing the deal.

Assad, appears as uncompromising as ever. He vowed again this week to win back the entire country, which has been splintered into areas controlled by the state, a constellation of rebel factions, Islamic State jihadists, and Kurdish militia fighters.

(Additional reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut, Tom Miles in Geneva, Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow and Michelle Nicols; Writing by Nick Tattersall, editing by Peter Millership)

Photo: A Civil Defence member reacts in a damaged site near the frame of a burnt vehicle after an airstrike on al-Jalaa street in the rebel held city of Idlib, Syria. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah