Aid blocked as Assad shells starving suburb

THE starving people of a Damascus suburb, enduring one of the longest sieges in Syria’s civil war, were prevented from receiving aid yesterday when Bashar alAssad’s forces turned back a desperately-needed convoy.

As the trucks drove away, the regime shelled Daraya, which Assad has blockaded since November 2012.

The regime has prevented any aid from reaching the suburb, which has about 8,000 surviving inhabitants.

The convoy of five lorries had been carrying medical supplies, vaccinations and baby milk. It was “refused entry” despite having obtained “prior clearance from all sides,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which organised the trucks alongside the UN and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

Daraya is only two miles from the aid warehouses in central Damascus.

A father and son waiting for the aid were killed by shells, apparently fired by Assad’s forces. Another five people were wounded.

“They shelled a place where people gathered in anticipation of the aid convoy,” said Ahmad, an activist working in the area. It was the first such attack in almost a month.

Many families have been reduced to subsisting on lit- tle more than soup. Medical supplies have been largely exhausted. During a visit last month, UN officials found there were four doctors serving the area, using outof-date medicines.

Aid convoys can only carry what the Syrian regime allows and had prevented the trucks from bringing in any food. “Children can’t stand in school, they’re getting dizzy from malnutrition and the convoys are bringing in school supplies? People in the town are so angry,” said Ahmad Mujahid, another resident. “The humanitarian situation is terrible. We need food urgently.”

Jan Egeland, the head of the international humanitarian task force for Syria, called Daraya the “place in Syria” with the “greatest unmet needs”. After five years of war, about 90 per cent of the pre-war population are believed to have fled.

UN officials found that children rarely played outside for fear of barrel bombs dropped by the regime’s helicopters. Many had damaged vision or impaired hearing due to the lack of light in their basement refuges and the proximity of explosions.

The UN has asked Syria’s regime for clearance to bring aid to 905,000 people trapped in besieged or other inaccessible areas. But the required permission has been granted for less than half of these people.

A Russian soldier has died after being wounded during combat in Homs province, the ninth military fatality since President Vladimir Putin intervened in the civil war last September.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that at least two other Russian soldiers are missing in Syria.