Besieged Syrian towns get food aid

GENEVA — More than 100 trucks laden with emergency food and medicine began deliveries Wednesday to tens of thousands of desperate Syrian sin five locations besieged for months by the civil war, U.N. officials and relief workers reported.

The deliveries were the first significant aid to the afflicted civilians under a diplomatic arrangement negotiated during a meeting in Munich last week of the so-called International Syria Support Group of 17 nations and finalized Tuesday between the United Nations and the Syrian government, which had blocked access to the locations.

Aid agencies had loaded 115 trucks with food and medical supplies for 100,000 people in the western towns of Madaya and Zabadani, the northwestern towns of Fouaa and Kfarya, and the Damascus suburb of Moadhamiyeh.

The trucks started moving in convoys Wednesday, and by evening at least some of them had reached all but Fouaa and Kfarya, relief workers and independent monitors said.

The convoy to Madaya was the first delivery in nearly a month to that town, where photographs of residents who starved to death have joined the list of iconic images of the fiveyear-old Syrian war. U.N. officials say ambulances of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent have made frequent visits and evacuated some of the most urgent cases.