Thousands in Syria face death as Assad regime prevents aid distribution
Date March 28, 2015 - 1:00PM
Ruth Sherlock
The Syrian government is stopping aid reaching needy citizens with up to 185,500 people trapped by government forces, the UN says.
People look for survivors amid debris after barrel bombs were reportedly dropped by forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo. Photo: Reuters
Beirut: Syria is preventing the distribution of humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of its citizens and "concrete" action by the United Nations Security Council is required to prevent their deaths, the UN has warned.
The UN's British under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, Baroness Amos, describing a civil war characterised by "breathtaking levels of savagery", said the regime of Bashar al-Assad "continues to put in place measures that are not practical and slow down our response". She added: "Time is running out. More people will die."
In the past year, Damascus had given the UN access to just three of the 33 besieged towns and cities it had tried to reach, leaving entire communities suffering with little food, clean water or medication, Lady Amos told the Security Council. As well as demanding that the aid effort first seek permission from a string of its ministries, Syrian troops had removed medical supplies from two convoys granted access, she said.
A UN Security Council resolution last year demanded humanitarian aid access to civilians caught in the war. But that had been flagrantly ignored by all fighting parties. The number of citizens living under blockade, at risk from dehydration, starvation and death, has doubled in the last year. Many of these 440,000 men, women and children were besieged by Islamic State militants and other opposition groups.
But Lady Amos said that as many as 185,500 people were trapped by government forces, "despite their assertions that they have a responsibility to look after their own people".
Footage published online from Yarmouk, a suburb of Damascus besieged by the regime, showed emaciated children near a dustbin picking up individual grains of rice from the ground.
Mr Assad told CBS news this week that he would be "open" to a dialogue with the United States, based on "mutual respect". But, on the ground in Syria, his troops continue to violate UN resolutions and international conventions on war.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the global chemical weapons watchdog, said on Friday that it would investigate allegations of a chlorine gas attack on a Syrian village in northern Idlib province that reportedly killed six people this month. The attack on Sarmin came 10 days after the Security Council condemned the use of chlorine as a weapon in Syria and threatened to take action if such arms were used again in the conflict.
The regime has denied dropping chlorine gas bombs from its helicopters. But evidence from victims and witnesses, video footage and scientific testing of soil samples in the area points to the contrary. An investigation by London's Telegraph newspaper last year revealed the Syrian air force had dropped dozens of chlorine gas bombs on villages located near the front lines.
Telegraph, London
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