Was the first thing she asked me when I entered Madaya

UN HUMANITARIAN WORKERS TO EVACUATE 400 RESIDENTS OF BESIEGED MOUNTAIN CITY FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT FOR STARVATION

The suffering in the Syrian town of Madaya is the worst seen in the country’s civil war, the United Nations said yesterday, a day after delivering aid to the town besieged for months.

“There is no comparison in what we saw in Madaya,” the UN refugee agency’s chief in Damascus, Sajjad Malek, told journalists in Geneva, when asked to compare the devastation in the town to other areas in Syria.

Aid convoys with food and other supplies reached three besieged villages on Monday — Madaya, near Damascus. About 400 people need to be evacuated immediately to receive lifesaving treatment for medical conditions, malnourishment and starvation, and the Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya in northern Syria.

UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien said efforts were to be made to get ambulances to Madaya yesterday to evacuate the 400 people, of all ages, if safe passage can be assured.

It will take several days to distribute the aid in Madaya, near Damascus, and the Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya in northern Syria, and the supplies are probably enough to last for a month, aid agencies said.

“It’s really heartbreaking to see the situation of the people,” said Red Cross spokesman Pawel Krzysiek, who oversaw the distribution in Madaya. “A while ago, I was just approached by a little girl and her first question was, ‘Did you bring food?’”

Sajjad Malek, a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees who took part in the operation, described how grateful the people were. “It’s cold and raining, but there is excitement because we are here with some food and blankets,” Malek said.

The operation marked a small, positive development in a bitter conflict now in its fifth year that has killed a quarter of a million people, displaced millions of others and left the country in ruins.

Rebels opposed to President Bashar Al Assad are in control of Madaya, a mountain town about 24 kilometres northwest