Madaya Syria: Aid convoy sets off for besieged town - BBC News
BBC
Aid lorries are heading to the besieged Syrian town of Madaya with enough food to last 40,000 people for a month, as well as medicine and blankets.
Residents have been trapped there for six months by a government blockade and have received no aid since October.
Twenty-eight are reported to have died of starvation since 1 December.
Aid will also be delivered to two villages besieged by rebel forces in the northern province of Idlib under a deal between the warring parties.
The situation in Foah and Kefraya is also said to be extremely dire, with an estimated 20,000 people trapped there since March.
Madaya, which is about 25km (15 miles) north-west of Damascus and 11km from the border with Lebanon, has been besieged since early July by government forces and their allies in Lebanon’s Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement.
Brice de la Vigne from the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) described the situation in the town as “quite horrific”.
War of words – Lyse Doucet, chief international correspondent, BBC News, Beirut
Tens of thousands of suffering Syrians will finally get aid but this humanitarian mission was forged by a cruel conflict. Aid for rebel-held Madaya was contingent on help for government-controlled Foah and Kefraya.
Images of Madaya’s emaciated children sparked alarm in many capitals and created greater impetus but they also provoked a war of words.
Supporters of the Syrian government and its Lebanese Hezbollah allies accused rebel forces in Madaya of seizing food for themselves. Some even mocked reports of starvation. The opposition charged President Assad’s forces with more war crimes.
Today, Madaya is the face of Syria’s suffering. Two years ago, it was Yarmouk.
These are moments that mobilise the world’s sympathy but over the past year, only 10% of the UN’s requests to deliver aid to people to in besieged and hard-to-reach areas were granted. That is where 4.5 million Syrians live.
Siege warfare in Syria
Syria’s civilians living a ‘life worse than death’
Mr de la Vigne, whose organisation supports a health centre in Madaya, told the BBC that more than 250 people there had “acute malnutrition”.
He added that 10 of them needed immediate medical evacuation or would die.
On Sunday, MSF said a total of 28 people – including six children less than one year old – had died of starvation in Madaya since 1 December.
Source: www.bbc.com