Suffering in Besieged Madaya Has No Precedent in Syria War, Says U.N.
The suffering in the Syrian town of Madaya is the worst seen in the country's civil war, the United Nations said Tuesday, a day after delivering aid to the area besieged for months.
"There is no comparison in what we saw in Madaya," the U.N. refugee agency's chief in Damascus, Sajjad Malik, told journalists in Geneva, when asked to compare the devastation in the town to other areas in Syria.
He said there were "credible reports" of people starving to death during the months-long siege by pro-regime forces.
Syria's ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, told journalists in New York on Monday that there was "no starvation in Madaya" after the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said 28 people in the town had starved to death.
A convoy of trucks from the U.N., Syrian Red Crescent and International Red Cross (ICRC) delivered emergency food supplies to Madaya on Monday, in the first aid to reach the area since October.
"There was no life," said Malik, who was in the convoy, describing a town of desperate people who in many cases were too weak to voice outrage over their suffering.
Food has been so scarce that people "repeatedly mentioned that a kilo of rice would cost $300 (275 euros)", Malik said.
One family "sold a motorbike to get five kilos of rice," he added, detailing the extent of the devastation among the town's estimated 40,000 inhabitants.
Residents told U.N. staff that a main source of food in recent weeks has been a soup made of grass boiled with the few available spices.
With no access to electricity, people in Madaya had tried to stay warm by burning cardboard, the U.N. official further said, adding: "Whatever we had in the cars, we gave to them."
As part of its deal with Damascus, the U.N. has permission to carry out two more aid deliveries to Madaya in the coming days, but timing and details have not yet been agreed with the regime.
Malik said the World Health Organization would seek establish the number of people who had died from starvation in Madaya when U.N. agencies were allowed back into the area.
He stressed the vital need to sustain aid deliveries through the coming months.
"If we are not able to sustain this... even the effort we have put in now will be a band-aid," he said. "We want to make sure that these sieges are lifted."
Amid the total collapse of health services in the town, WHO said it wants to deploy mobile health clinics to Madaya.
over 9 years
According to Hezbollah and every person with a working brain, people were starved by the rebels who hold them hostage inside the town.
Madaya's people are true syrians who stand with their country against the foreign-backed terrorists, this is why they were punished.
Exhibit A:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=09f_1452092018
Exhibit B:
https://twitter.com/Souria4Syrians/status/684559608946552833
Who do you think made profits from the rice sold at 300$/kg?
over 9 years
You call others "dogs", but you're the only one barking here. And you call others "idiots", but you're incapable of answering facts and arguments with anything else than insults.
Take a hike kiddo, you're simply irrelevant and negligible.
over 9 years
"There is no comparison in what we saw in Madaya," the U.N. refugee agency's chief in Damascus, Sajjad Malik. He said there were "credible reports" of people starving to death during the months-long siege by pro-regime forces."
but the iranian sectarian troll mowaten says there is no starvation in Madaya and in the remote chance there is it was caused by the rebels.
over 9 years
Can't wait for the UN's Human Rights committee report, which is headed by the lighthouse of Human Rights in the world.
over 9 years
A new low for hezbollah and the assad regime
Madaya: Syrian regime supporters share food photos to taunt starving civilians trapped in town
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/madaya-syrian-regime-supporters-share-food-photos-to-taunt-starving-civilians-trapped-in-town-a6803676.html
Sick Assad supporters troll Syrians starving in rebel-held town by tweeting pictures of their DINNER ( BTW most of the taunting is done by hezbollah supporters)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3391913/Regime-supporters-trolling-Syrians-starving-besieged-town-Madaya-tweeting-pictures-dinner.html
over 9 years
ethnic cleansing by iran ... supported by hezbollah of course! LOL "Iran's negotiating terms are bad news for Syria. It reportedly offered to end the assault on Zabadani on two conditions: that its fighters be allowed to evacuate Fu'a and Kefraya, and that Zabadani's largely Sunni population leave the city. This would be the first deliberate, large-scale sectarian population transfer in the Syrian war. It is not clear whether that would benefit the regime, but displacing a hostile Sunni population from critical territory would clearly benefit Hezbollah and Iran, both Shia powers. That Iran is negotiating Syria's new sectarian geography indicates its war strategy has become less about reconquering insurgent territory, and more about shaping a new Syria to secure its interests."http://www.huffingtonpost.com/faysal-itani/in-zabadani-signs-of-a-ne_b_8097416.html
and they pretend not to be sectarians!!!! hypocrits they are indeed....
That cannot be because according to the Hezb and Southern, these are all lies.