WORLD_ SYRIA_ Starvation in besieged Syrian towns: UN

THE AUSTRALIAN

Starvation in besieged Syrian towns: UN

AAP
January 12, 2016 10:06AM

Trucks carrying food and medical supplies have reached Madaya near the Lebanese border and are beginning to distribute aid as part of an agreement between warring sides, the United Nations and the Red Cross say.

A UN spokesman said aid trucks were also en route to the Shi'ite villages of al Foua and Kefraya in the northwestern province of Idlib, two other areas where there is a desperate need for humanitarian assistance.

US ambassador Samantha Power also had strong words about Madaya, slamming the "grotesque starve-or-surrender tactics the Syrian regime is using right now against its own people".

"Look at the haunting pictures of civilians, including children, even babies, in Madaya," she said on Monday. "These are just the pictures we see. There are hundreds of thousands of people being deliberately besieged, deliberately starved, right now. And these images, they remind us of World War Two."

Power was speaking at a special session of the 193-nation UN General Assembly on the 70th anniversary of the assembly's first meeting in London.

Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told reporters his government was committed to "co-operate fully" on aid delivery but said much of what was said about Madaya was "based on false information". He labelled pictures of starving people as "fabrications".

"There is no shortage of humanitarian assistance in Madaya," he said, adding that some aid has been "looted by armed terrorist groups".

However, UN and relief agency workers saw starving people in two besieged Syrian areas where aid deliveries were made, a senior UN official said.

Yacoub El Hillo, the UN resident and humanitarian co-ordinator in Syria who was in Madaya overseeing the operation, said he had also received reports, which could not be confirmed, that at least 40 people had died of starvation.

"We have seen with our own eyes severely malnourished children. I am sure there also malnourished older people and it is true they are malnourished, and so there is starvation, and I am sure the same is true on the other side in al Foua and Kefyra," he told Reuters by phone from Madaya on Monday.

Foua and Kafyra are two mostly Shi'ite villages, besieged by rebels, that also received deliveries from Monday's convoy.

***


Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc . 
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị . 



conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
12012016
___________
Cộng sản Việt Nam là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là ĐỒNG LÕA với TỘI ÁC