Britain under pressure to send RAF to airdrop aid to starving Syrian town

[Sally]

I hope they make up their minds soon to drop aid to these starving people. Imagine having to eat your pet to stay alive.


Britain under pressure to send RAF to airdrop aid to starving Syrian town
Lord Ashdown leads calls for aid to Madaya, where thousands are starving

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Photo: PHOTOS MADAYA



By Louisa Loveluck and Ben Farmer

6:47PM GMT 08 Jan 2016


Senior British politicians are leading calls for the RAF to drop aid to a besieged Syrian town where thousands of civilians are starving to death.

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At least 23 people died of starvation in Madaya last month and aid agencies have warned that more will die in the coming days.

On Friday, a Madaya resident, Khaled, said the town could not afford any delay. “We can’t take it anymore” he told the Telegraph. “Why is there no help for us? We have mothers, sisters, brothers. We are human just like you.”

Although the Syrian regime has said it will allow aid to enter the town, this will be too late for many who are already close to starvation.

Syrian children carry placards as they call for the lifting of the siege of Madaya and Zabadani Photo: REUTERS

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, and Jo Cox, a Labour MP, urged the Government to “strongly consider airdropping aid to those communities at risk of starvation” if the UN is denied adequate access to the town.

Besieged by regime forces and Hizbollah since July, Madaya’s 40,000 residents have been reduced to eating boiled strawberry leaves. Photographs taken in the town show the shrivelled corpses of old men and pinched faces of starving infants.

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Britain under pressure to send RAF to airdrop aid to starving Syrian town

 

[aris2chat]

they have been suffering for months, and they only now thought to air drop food?

 

[waltky]

400 starving Syrians must be evacuated now or face death...

U.N. official: 400 starving Syrians must be evacuated now or face death
Tue January 12, 2016 - U.N. official: 400 Syrians in Madaya are on the brink of death; The rebel-held city of Madaya has been choked off by regime blockades and landmines; Residents weep at the sight of food trucks, a U.N. source says

Shortly after aid trucks finally reached Madaya, the situation turned out to be even more dire than expected. Hundreds of civilians in the besieged Syrian city are on the brink of death, said Stephen O'Brien, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, "... we found some 400 people who must be evacuated IMMEDIATELY for medical treatment or face dying #Syria," O'Brien tweeted. Madaya has been ravaged by starvation in the Syrian civil war. The rebel-held city has been choked off by the regime and landmines.

On Monday, the city of 40,000 received its first shipment of foreign aid since October. The sight of food trucks brought starving residents to tears, a U.N. source told CNN. The U.N. Refugee Agency said 49 vehicles were delivering aid to Madaya. According to SANA, Syria's state news agency, 65 trucks loaded with aid supplies entered Madaya and two other besieged towns, Foua and Kefraya. "It's heartbreaking to see so many hungry people," said Sajjad Malik, the UNHCR representative in Syria. "It's cold and raining, but there is excitement because we are here with some food and blankets."

Shocking images of starving residents of Madaya have garnered international attention. Graphic images of death and starvation coming out of Madaya have not been independently confirmed by aid groups or CNN. But the United Nations said last week that it had received credible reports of people dying of starvation and that the Syrian government had agreed to allow aid convoys into Madaya, Foua and Kefraya.

The situation has been so dire that a doctor told CNN he has nothing to give his patients except sugar or salt water. In one video posted by Syrian activists, a skeletal boy -- his ribs protruding -- says he hasn't eaten a full meal in seven days. The convoy for Madaya came from the U.N. World Food Programme, International Red Cross and Syrian Arab Red Crescent. It should sustain 40,000 people for a month, WFP spokeswoman Abeer Etefa said. The U.N. source told CNN that an equivalent amount of aid would also enter the regime-loyal towns of Foua and Kefraya, in the northern province of Idlib, which were enduring a similar plight while under siege by rebels.

Syrian government denies starvation

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Aid trucks reach starving residents of Madaya in Syria
Monday 11th January, 2016 - Trucks carrying food, medicine, blankets and hygiene kits have begun to enter the besieged and starving Syrian town of Madaya as well as two Shia villages 200 miles away in the country's north. The Syrian government allowed UN agencies to supply aid to Madaya after shocking images of emaciated children and adults from the town attracted worldwide attention.

Five more people died of starvation there on Sunday, the international charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has said. The organisation had said that 200 more malnourished patients could become critical if aid did not arrive. The trucks carrying food had moved into the city by about 5.30 p.m. Monday local time. An International Red Cross spokesman said the convoys entered Madaya, close to the Lebanon border, and Fuaa and Kafraya in Idlib province near Syria's border with Turkey on Monday. In Fuaa and Kafraya, the rebels are responsible for sieges that have left the people there in need of urgent help.

Pro-government forces have blockaded Madaya town of about 42,000 people. The rebel-controlled town last received food assistance in October. The UN and Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) say people have died of starvation. Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based SOHR, told Arab media that 49 aid trucks were headed to Madaya and 21 others to the government towns of Kafraya and Foua. "Madaya is now effectively an open-air prison for an estimated 20,000 people, including infants, children, and elderly," Doctors Without Borders or MSF Director of Operations Brice de le Vingne said in a statement by the organization last week. Residents of Madaya had gathered near the town's entrance for hours anticipating the aid's arrival.

The convoy arrived from Damascus days after President Bashar al-Assad's government approved a request by the U.N. to send aid the second time that the Syrian government has allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross access to Madaya in recent months, despite repeated requests to enter. Blockades have been used by all sides in Syria's five-year conflict, the government as well as rebel groups and extremists, including the Islamic State. The regime uses them widely against opposition-controlled areas, including outlying areas of Damascus, in an effort to force those fighters to surrender. At least 23 people, including six children, have died from starvation in Madaya since the siege began in July, according to Doctors Without Borders.

Before the aid delivery, which was overseen by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, its residents survived by eating stray cats and dogs and foraging for leaves and grass even as plummeting temperatures made foraging harder. Separately on Monday, a UK-based monitor said at least 12 children had died after a Russian airstrike hit a school in Aleppo province. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike in the town of Anjara also injured at least 20 people, all of them children and teachers. It also reported that three children had been killed by rebel rocket fire on a government-held district in Aleppo city. Control of the city has been divided between government forces in the west and rebel fighters in the east since shortly after fighting began there in mid-2012.

Aid trucks reach starving residents of Madaya in Syria

 

[Phoenall]

I wonder when the world will start to send aid to the UK after 20% of the country was flooded 3 times in December and early January. This is 100's of 1,000's of people homeless, starving and with no hope. They have the clothes on their backs and no place to live, no food and no heating. Or is this not of grave concern to the UN and aid agencies because we are not a muslim nation. Strange how cash is found to help muslims affected by the flooding over Christmas but none is available for the indigenous who are suffering the most. Trump is right and many British people would like to see him as our next P.M. so we could look after our own. Over £50million to be spent in aid to countries that don't have any rain in flood prevention and £50,000 spent in the UK.
SO LET THE PEOPLE OF SYRIA LOOK AFTER THEMSELVES, AND RETURN TO FIGHT AGAINST THE DICTATORS AND INSURGENTS