U.N. Relief Official Calls for ‘Immediate’ End to Blockades in Syria
By SOMINI SENGUPTA and ANNE BARNARD

UNITED NATIONS — The head of the United Nations’ relief efforts for Syria pleaded with all warring parties on Tuesday to lift their sieges on key towns and let aid agencies deliver food and medical care to people stuck behind front lines.

“The immediate thing to be done is to lift sieges everywhere,” the humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Yacoub El Hillo, told reporters by phone from Damascus, the Syrian capital, where he is based.

Mr. Hillo’s comments came a day after he joined a carefully negotiated aid convoy into the besieged town of Madaya. He said he saw severely malnourished people there, especially children, and others who had gone hungry for a long time. He said some people he met there resembled “skeletons that are now barely moving.”

The United Nations delivered packets of food rations meant to last one month for a family of five. Another convoy is due to go to Madaya on Thursday.

Madaya, a rebel-held town encircled by government troops and Iranian-backed, pro-government militia fighters, is one of several Syrian communities where civilians are besieged, Mr. Hillo said. It has been impossible for aid agencies to get food or medicine into Deir al-Zour, which is blockaded by the Islamic State; there, he said, plans for airdrops of relief supplies were abandoned because planes were certain to be fired upon. And the towns of Fouaa and Kfraya, where some humanitarian relief was delivered Monday, have been besieged by a battlefield coalition called Jaish al-Fatah, which includes several rebel groups backed by regional powers, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

“All parties to the conflict are exercising it, and it must stop,” Mr. Hillo said.

Residents of Fouaa, interviewed in early January by Amnesty International, described living without electricity and clean water. Armed groups shelled the town’s main water tank, one man said. Food has run out for many families. The rebel coalition holding the city under siege announced the execution of two men who were caught trying to smuggle in food “and warned that the same fate awaited anyone who tried to smuggle even a single loaf of bread,” Amnesty said.

Pawel Krzysiek, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross who visited some of the besieged towns, said malnutrition was compounded by a lack of basic medical services, clean water and heat. “Lack of food makes you weak,” he said, “so your immunity goes down, so you get sick and you cannot get the proper medicine, so you get worse, and you don’t realize how quickly your state can deteriorate.”

The most shocking moment, he said, was walking into a makeshift clinic in the basement of a house, overloaded with people receiving rehydration salts, and realizing how poorly supplied it was.

“One hospital bed in the middle with a pregnant woman lying on one side and two children on the other, and the rest of the people lying on the floor,” he said.

The aid convoy in Madaya on Monday also discovered that 400 people needed urgent medical evacuation, relief officials said. So far, they have managed to extract only one patient: a 5-year-old girl who was severely malnourished and needed urgent abdominal surgery.

Hospitals in Madaya are no longer equipped to handle even malnutrition cases, and United Nations officials are trying to get mobile clinics into the town until deals can be struck to extract those in need of lifesaving medical treatment.

On Tuesday, no details were available about their conditions or numbers. Several aid officials said sensitive negotiations were underway to attempt to help them, including to get in basic medical supplies. As with the previous negotiations, that is difficult because there are many warring parties involved.

Hanaa Singer, the Syria representative for Unicef, said a one-time convoy would not solve the problems of the acutely ill. She said that a “door-to-door assessment” was needed to learn how many people were in dire medical need and what they needed, and that inpatient treatment in town would be best for them; even moving such patients could endanger them.

“For this we really need unimpeded access,” she said. “For nutrition cases especially, this is not a convoy question. Regular access is the only way, and regular support.”

Mr. Hillo’s comments were noteworthy for how unequivocally he rebutted the Syrian government’s contention that the distress of Madaya was fabricated. ”We saw what we saw,” he said. “We saw people that are desperate. We saw people that are cold, people that are hungry, people that have almost lost hope that the world cares about their plight.”

While world powers negotiate on what he called an “elusive” peace deal, it is essential for those powers to help lift the sieges, he said. “Many more will die if the world does not move faster,” he said.

敘利亞內戰3村落快餓死 救援物資送抵

敘利亞內戰近5年，民眾顛沛流離，被武裝分子圍困山區的瑪達亞等3個村莊，村民因缺乏糧食鬧饑荒，瀕臨死亡關頭。聯合國的救難物資11日抵達瑪達亞，盼12日能撤離住院病危的400名病患。

位於敘利亞首都大馬士革西北方約24公里山區的瑪達亞（Madaya）村，以及敘國西北部的兩個什葉派穆斯林村落弗亞（Foua）和卡法亞（Kfraya），在反抗軍控制之下。效忠總統阿塞德的政府軍加上來自黎巴嫩的真主黨成員包圍該村，封鎖運輸管道。

村子在封鎖下糧食告罄，能吃的，居民都不放過，一開始還有貓狗或樹葉可吃，接著只能吃泥土和垃圾充飢。村中的慘狀曝光後吸引全球關注，聯合國緊急折衝協調，和國際紅十字會合作，載著食物和藥品的車隊11日平安抵達村落。

主管人道事務的聯合國副秘書長歐布萊恩指出，物資估計可維持一個月。村中醫院約400名病患，因過度挨餓導致營養失調，情況危急；他期盼最快12日將病患運下山就醫。

在村子口等待救援的教師葛森說：「我想離開，瑪達亞什麼也沒有，沒有水沒有電，沒有食物。」

國際紅十字會發言人克茲席克說：「看到村民的狀況，實在令人心碎。剛剛有個小女孩走向我，開口的第一個問題是『你有帶吃的來嗎？』」

聯合國難民署代表馬里克說：「天氣很冷還下雨，但大家很興奮，因為我們帶著食物和毛毯來了。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/world/middleeast/un-relief-official-calls-for-immediate-end-to-blockades-in-syria.html

2016-01-12．聯合晚報．A6．國際焦點．編譯莊蕙嘉