Starvation fears as rations run out in eastern Aleppo

It is terrible as we speak; it could get much worse. I do not think anybody wants a quarter of a million people to be starving. Jan Egeland

The last of stockpiled rations were distributed yesterday in east Aleppo, and widespread starvation is expected to set in as winter arrives if no progress is made in negotiations to deliver food and medical aid, the United Nations said.

“It is terrible as we speak; it could get much worse,” UN relief envoy Jan Egeland said in Geneva. “I do not think anybody wants a quarter of a million people to be starving . . . I cannot see anyone wishing to see so many civilians bleed to death . . . because of indiscriminate war.”

Russia said it would continue, at last through to today, what has been a pause of several weeks in its air attacks. But it said that it and the Syrian Government — which had fled to Mazraat Khaled from nearby al- Heisha to be escorted to a safe area away from the shelling.

It was in Isis- held Al- Heisha that 20 civilians were killed and 32 wounded on Wednesday in an airstrike by the international coalition, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Rojda said the YPJ’s mission i s straightforward. “We’re fighting to keep our mothers and sisters safe. Our victories are making history,” occupies western Aleppo and surrounds the entire city — would not fail to respond to ongoing shelling and other ground attacks by rebel forces in the east.

Egeland said that “tremendous ground fighting” between the two sides has stopped repeated plans to deliver aid to civilians and evacuate the wounded.

He pleaded with Russia and the United States to continue trying to negotiate some form of ceasefire. “It is only when these two . . . have been leading that we have made progress, when we have not been completely stalled.”

Planned humanitarian convoys have yet to deliver aid, he said, because of the danger and the inability to obtain simultaneous security guarantees from all sides. A new UN proposal was delivered to said the commander clad in a navyblue parka.

“Often, in military matters, people look down on women with condescension, claiming we’re too delicate, that we wouldn’t dare carry a knife or a gun,” she said.

“But you can see for yourself that in the YPJ we can operate a dushka, we know how to use mortars and we can conduct demining operations,” said Rojda, flashing a smile.

Eating a sandwich, Rojda joined a the US, Russia and other actors early this week.

“Syria is the worst war, the worst humanitarian crisis, the worst displacement crisis, the worst refugee crisis in a generation,” Egeland said.

While there has been no contact with the incoming Trump Administration, he said: “We expect US help and engagement to be group of women fighters, their Kalashnikov assault rifles leaning against the wall, hunkered down on the ground for a chat on how the battle is going or just to share a laugh.

Shireen, a 25- year- old from Ras alAin on the border with Turkey, scanned the battlefront with a pair of binoculars.

“As a Kurdish woman in the YPJ, it gives me great pleasure to take part in this campaign to defeat those mercenaries,” she said, before mocking the continued, uninterrupted, in the coming months.”

But US- Russia engagement, despite months of negotiations over a ceasefire in Aleppo and beyond, has made no progress in ending sieges across western Syria, largely by surrounding government forces, or in moving toward a transition government that both have said is their long- term goal.

In Moscow, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia would continue to work with the new Administration on Syria, but that “it would be exaggeration and wishful thinking to say that we are on the threshold of some radical change for the better”. Ryabkov suggested that repeated delays in initiating a political process in Syria were largely Washington’s fault. fear that her unit inspires.

“Our voice frightens them. They’re scared a woman will kill them. For them, women should be slaves to men,” said Shireen.

“It drives me crazy when I see women wearing the niqab [ Islamic face veil], and I get so happy when I see them taking it off,” when they are no longer under Isis rule, said Shireen, herself wearing a scarf embroidered with multicoloured flowers.