Ceasefire call as Syrian war flares
"The war is far from over. This is a really critical stage. The humanitarian situation has dramatically deteriorated, and that's why we are ringing alarm bells." Panos Moumtzis, UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Damascus
SYRIA: The United Nations appealed for an immediate ceasefire in Syria yesterday as spiralling violence pushed the country to the brink of one of the worst humanitarian crises in the seven-year war.
A halt to the fighting for at least a month is vital to allow urgently needed aid to reach 2.9 million stricken people living around the front lines of the latest fighting, the UN mission in Damascus said, warning of ‘‘dire consequences’’ if the current levels of violence are sustained.
The appeal coincides with the collapse in recent weeks of a yearold Russian effort to tamp down the violence through ‘‘deescalation zones’’, which had helped contribute to a perception that the war in Syria finally was winding down.
Instead, the first weeks of 2018 have turned into one of the bloodiest periods of the conflict yet, with hundreds killed in air strikes, nearly 300,000 displaced in northwestern Syria and 400,000 at risk of starvation in a besieged area east of Damascus that has not received food since November.
‘‘The war is far from over,’’ Panos Moumtzis, the United Nations’ humanitarian coordinator in Damascus, said at a briefing for journalists in Beirut. ‘‘This is a really critical stage. The humanitarian situation has dramatically deteriorated, and that’s why we are ringing alarm bells.’’
There has also been a spike in the number of reports of attacks by the government using chlorine as a chemical weapon, prompting warnings from the United States to the Syrian government to desist and to Russia to pressure its ally to halt the attacks.
There have been six reported attacks using bombs laden with chlorine in the past month, the State Department said.
The latest surge in violence began in late December and coincides with the winding down of the fight against the Islamic State in eastern Syrian, which freed up thousands of Syrian government forces to take on rebels and al Qaeda-allied fighters in their last few enclaves elsewhere in the country.
Since then, nearly 300,000 civilians have fled a new government offensive to recapture territory in the northwestern province of Idlib. They have taken refuge in the north of the province in one of the biggest displacements of the war so far, Moumtzis said.
Aid workers are struggling to find space to accommodate them, and as many as 750,000 more could flee if the violence continues, he said.
A separate crisis is developing east of Damascus, in the rebel-held enclave of Ghouta, where more than 400,000 people surrounded by government forces have been reliant on UN aid for four years.
The Syrian government has prevented all deliveries of food to the area since November, putting the population at risk of starvation, and has refused to allow the evacuation of about 600 people injured in the fighting to hospitals in nearby Damascus, Moumtzis said. – Washington Post