Nothing is left, say aid workers let into Syrian suburb to find children eating animal feed
AFTER stepping out of his truck, Pawel Krzysiek looked around at a town that no longer seemed habitable. Until Monday, the aid worker had only seen the destroyed landscape in pictures.
From the wreckage of the neighbourhood of Douma, which has borne the brunt of the Syrian government’s offensive on besieged rebel-held Eastern Ghouta, came families desperate for food.
“My children have been living in the basement for 15 days to escape the bombs,” one mother told Mr Krzysiek, who works for the International Committee of the Red Cross, saying they had only mouldy bread and animal feed to eat. “Why is no one helping us?” she implored. “Why can’t someone stop this? Will the world stay silent?”
The convoy of 46 trucks carrying UN aid was the first into the Damascus suburb since last month, and the ICRC’S first since last November.
Surrounded by the forces of Bashar al-assad, Syria’s president, residents of Eastern Ghouta are struggling to find food, and it is getting worse every day.
“Everything is missing from their society. There is no society,” Mr Krzysiek told The Daily Telegraph by telephone from Damascus. “There are no markets, no medicine, no basic supplies, they can’t even go to medical facilities because they are afraid of being hit.”
He said hundreds of people displaced by the fighting in other districts had gathered in makeshift shelters underground.
“The few people there who have food feel bad eating it in front of the others,” he said. “So they go out on the street to eat, where they are dangerously exposed to air strikes.
“The residents appreciate the humanitarian aid that was brought in – of course they want food and medicine – but really they just wanted shelling to stop. They genuinely fear for their lives and how this will all end.
“They told us: all we want is to stay here and live in dignity, and if we can’t live in dignity, at least let there be some for our children.”
Anger towards the UN among residents has been building since the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution on a 30-day ceasefire last month without implementing it. More than 250 have died in the last 10 days.
“I thought people would be much angrier, much more aggressive towards us, which I would not blame them for at all,” Mr Krzysiek said. “They have the right to be angry, the conditions they’re living in are very difficult. The stories they tell you are horrific.”
A third of the trucks that made it into Eastern Ghouta on Monday were not able to unload their contribution because of shelling in the area, despite guarantees of a safe passage.
The fate of the convoy has been tied to the political situation, aid workers told The Telegraph, making it difficult, if not impossible, to reach any kind of agreement. Monday’s delivery coincided with one of the deadliest days for Eastern Ghouta, where some 89 people were reported to have been killed.
Doctors also reported a suspected chlorine attack in the Hamouriyeh area, treating some 30 cases of suffocation and breathing problems.
The UN Children’s Fund (Unicef ) revealed yesterday that around 1,000 children had been killed and injured since the start of the year. Residents the ICRC spoke to expressed hope for a political solution, but it seemed further away than ever yesterday.
Russia, which is supporting the Assad regime, said it would allow rebels to leave via a humanitarian corridor together with their families and firearms. Rebels said no such offer had been communicated with them, and they would reject it in any case.
Assad sees all those fighting the government as terrorists, which he uses as justification for the continuing bombardment of Eastern Ghouta.
“Russia and the regime are using the excuse that they are fighting Jabhat alnusra (an al-qaeda-aligned group),” Iyad Abdel-aziz, president of the Local Council in Douma, told The Telegraph. “But what’s strange is that we have now around 1,500 dead – more than a third of them women and children. But there have been no dead among Nusra, not even an injury.
“They say this is a war on Jabhat alnusra, which doesn’t make up more than 250 of the 20,000 fighting on the ground here. It has been proposed to the Russians and the regime that there is a readiness to force Jabhat al-nusra out of Ghouta,” he said.
“And Nusra is ready to leave. But the regime and Russians want them to remain so they can have a reason to finish the war they started.”