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Tag: siege
Severe Malnutrition Confirmed In Syria’s Madaya, 32 Deaths Reported In Month: U.N.

Severe Malnutrition Confirmed In Syria’s Madaya, 32 Deaths Reported In Month: U.N.

By John Davison and Stephanie Nebehay

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. Children’s Fund UNICEF on Friday confirmed cases of severe malnutrition among children in the besieged western Syrian town of Madaya, where local relief workers reported 32 deaths of starvation in the past month.

A mobile clinic and medical team of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent was on its way to Madaya after the government approved an urgent request, and a vaccination campaign is planned next week, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

Two convoys of aid supplies were delivered this week to the town of 42,000 under a months-long blockade. The United Nations said another convoy was planned to Madaya, sealed off by pro-government forces, and rebel-besieged villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib next week, and that regular access was needed.

“UNICEF … can confirm that cases of severe malnutrition were found among children,” it said in a statement, after the United Nations and Red Cross had entered the town on Monday and Thursday to deliver aid for the first time since October.

UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac told a news briefing in Geneva that UNICEF and WHO staff were able to screen 25 children under five and 22 of them showed signs of moderate to severe malnutrition. All were now receiving treatment.A further 10 children aged from 6 to 18 were examined and six showed signs of severe malnutrition, he said.

UNICEF staff also witnessed the death of a severely malnourished 16-year-old boy in Madaya, while a 17-year-old boy in “life-threatening condition” and a pregnant women with obstructed labor need to be evacuated, Boulierac said.

Abeer Pamuk of the SOS Children’s Villages charity said of the children she saw in Madaya: “They all looked pale and skinny. They could barely talk or walk. Their teeth are black, their gums are bleeding, and they have lots of health problems with their skin, hair, nails, teeth.

“They have basically been surviving on grass. Some families also reported having eaten cats,” she said in a statement. “A lot of people were also giving their children sleeping pills, because the children could not stop crying from hunger, and their parents had nothing to feed them.”

She said her agency was working to bring unaccompanied and separated children from Madaya to care centers in quieter areas just outside the capital Damascus.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people in critical condition were evacuated to a hospital in the city of Latakia, on Syria’s government-controlled Mediterranean coast, from Kefraya and al-Foua on Friday.

 

DYING OF STARVATION

World Food Programme (WFP) spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said that the local relief committee in Madaya had provided figures on the extent of starvation, but it could not verify them.

“Our nutritionist…was saying that it is clear that the nutritional situation is very bad, the adults look very emaciated. According to a member of the relief committee, 32 people have died of starvation in the last 30-day period.”

Dozens of deaths from starvation have been reported by monitoring groups, local doctors, and aid agencies from Madaya.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday Syria’s warring parties, particularly the government, were committing “atrocious acts” and he condemned the use of starvation as a weapon of war in the nearly five-year-old conflict.

“It can also be a crime against humanity. But it would very much depend on the circumstances, and the threshold of proof is often much more difficult for a crime against humanity (than for a war crime),” U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a briefing in Geneva on Friday.

The United Nations says there are some 450,000 people trapped in around 15 siege locations across Syria, including in areas controlled by the government, Islamic State militants and other insurgent groups.

 

(Reporting by John Davison and Tom Perry in Beirut; Writing by Stephanie Nebehay and Mariam Karouny; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

 

Syrian Forces Break Rebels’ Long Siege Of Prison In Aleppo

Syrian Forces Break Rebels’ Long Siege Of Prison In Aleppo

By Patrick J. McDonnell and Nabih Bulos, Los Angeles Times

BEIRUT — Syrian government forces have broken a long siege on the strategically situated prison in the northern city of Aleppo, government and pro-opposition groups said Thursday.

The advance of tanks and troops into the sprawling prison complex on the northeastern edge of Aleppo is the latest victory for government forces ahead of the presidential election scheduled for June 3.

The government is keen to project an image of mounting battlefield victories in the run-up to the election, which is widely expected to result in another seven-year term for President Bashar Assad.

Forces loyal to Assad have fought off a 3-year-old uprising and have taken the offensive on several fronts in Syria, inflicting strategic defeats on rebels backed by the United States and its allies.

Earlier this month, the Syrian military recaptured the Old City of Homs, a longtime opposition bastion in the center of the nation. Beleaguered rebels agreed to evacuate the area in a deal between the two sides.

In Aleppo, analysts say, Syrian forces may be trying to re-create the Homs scenario by pushing rebels back, cutting off their supply lines and forcing a surrender or retreat.

But the military, overstretched as it fights on numerous fronts, may face a long battle before its troops can encircle rebel-held strongholds in Aleppo. Rebels control much of the city’s east and several suburbs and routes leading in and out of the city.

The army has made some territorial gains in the area but has faced fierce resistance from various rebel brigades, including forces of Al Nusra Front, the al-Qaida franchise in Syria.

“The fall of the prison does not lead to a siege on Aleppo,” an opposition activist in the city who goes by the nickname Abu Yazeed Al-Halabi said via Skype. “But the regime is working on completing the perimeter around Aleppo and besieging it as it did in Homs.”

Another pro-opposition activist declared, “Aleppo is not a city that can be besieged.”

A major complication is the fact that Aleppo is near the Turkish border, a logistics hub for the rebels. Opposition forces control key border crossings, with fighters and supplies regularly crossing into Syria, and Turkey has strongly backed their cause.

Still, the government advance in Aleppo is clearly a strategic and symbolic triumph for Assad and the latest in a series of setbacks for rebel forces.

Both the state-run news media and a pro-opposition monitoring group reported Thursday that the military had been able to enter the prison grounds, which had been under rebel siege for 13 months.

The government had reportedly been forced to airlift supplies into the facility as its forces fought off rebel thrusts, led on several occasions by bomb-laden vehicles driven by suicide bombers.

As many as 4,000 prisoners were said to be in the prison. There have been unconfirmed reports that some of them were killed during the periodic battles and that others have died of hunger-related ailments.

On Thursday, photos posted on Twitter purported to show haggard prisoners behind bars welcoming army troops.

In a statement, the army called the advance “highly important” as “it serves to tighten the noose on residual terrorist groups in the eastern and northeastern outskirts of Aleppo city and cuts off supply lines that terrorist gangs were using.”

Syrian officials routinely refer to the rebels as “terrorists.”

Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial hub and its most populous city, has been divided between government and rebel forces for almost two years. Large swaths of the city have been destroyed and much of the population has fled amid clashes and heavy government bombardment.

AFP Photo/Karam al-Masri