UN aid convoy finally reaches besieged suburb
SYRIA: The bodies of the two infants were laid next to each other on the hospital floor, bundled tightly in United Nations food sacks. It was all the doctors had left to wrap the growing number of dead.
The picture of the latest victims of the Syrian government’s offensive on Eastern Ghouta has become a symbol for its besieged residents.
‘‘All the UN is good for now is providing cover for the bodies of our dead children,’’ one remarked. The UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution on a 30-day ceasefire on February 24, but it has yet to be implemented.
More than 200 people have been killed waiting for the ceasefire. So for many, it was too little, too late when UN trucks carrying food and aid finally made it to the enclave yesterday.
Forty-six trucks of food and medical equipment reached Eastern Ghouta after days of wrangling with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and not before the vehicles were stripped of more than 70 per cent of their loads. Even as the convoy passed yesterday afternoon, air strikes hit just a few hundreds metres away. Residents of Eastern Ghouta, trapped for five years by Assad’s forces, have been living in dire conditions, many of them without sufficient food or electricity.
Only one delivery has reached the enclave this year – it came last month, and was enough to help just a fraction of its nearly 400,000 residents. Charities have warned that there are dozens of people who require evacuation for urgent medical treatment, and say others face starvation if aid is not allowed in.
Pro-Assad forces had made sudden advances into Eastern Ghouta in recent days despite a Russianorganised ‘‘humanitarian pause’’, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Syria’s Central Military Media said troops had continued their advance from the east and were 3km from meeting up with soldiers advancing from the west, which would cut the suburb into two parts.
More than 50 people were killed on Monday and more than 45 were reported dead yesterday, according to the Syrian American Medical Society, which supports hospitals in the area. Tens of thousands were reported to have been driven from their homes, forced further into the centre of the suburb by fighting.
The UN Human Rights Council yesterday ordered investigators to look into the latest violence, after Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the world body’s rights chief, warned that crimes against humanity had likely been committed.