Many residents in the town of Daraya, a suburb of Syria’s capital Damascus, haven’t seen an outsider in four years. One of the first towns to take part in anti-government protests, Daraya has been under siege and subject to bombing in the last few years, with the humanitarian situation deteriorating to such an extent that the town’s residents are facing starvation.
Thursday morning, however, the town’s residents gathered to greet an aid convoy from the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The residents were dissatisfied to learn that no food was on the convoy — apart from baby formula — but vital medicine afforded some residents a glimmer of hope that the delivery would just be the first of many. Instead, the convoy was turned away by a regime checkpoint and residents were shelled. A father and son died from the shelling and five others were wounded.
Residents blame the regime for the attack. Residents also said they felt the international community had given up on them. Officials from the aid groups said the Syrian government had previously given them assurances to enter the town and that they were
“The UN and International Committee of the Red Cross aborted the mission to Daraya because the convoy was refused entry, due to the medical and nutritional supplies on board,” UN spokeswoman Stéphane Dujarric said in a written statement. “These conditions, imposed by government security personnel, were unacceptable, and contrary to earlier guarantees and approvals obtained by the Syrian government.”
The government has been consistently denying international aid to civilians in rebel-held areas of the country. Half of the 905,000 people set to receive aid from the UN this month were denied by government forces. While the areas where most of these civilians reside consider themselves liberated from the government, the government says they are controlled by terrorists and they are trying to separate civilians from rebels.
“We have a problem with Daraya,” Ali Haidar told the Wall Street Journal early this year. He said that rebels had denied truce offers from the government. “We want to break the connection between rebels and civilians,” he said.
In the meantime, Daraya’s residents are suffering. A top UN adviser on Syria’s humanitarian situation said Thursday that Daraya is “probably the place in Syria today where the greatest unmet needs caused by besiegement exist.”
Residents aren’t sure how much longer they can last, as they already are surviving on diets of lentils and rice soups that are consolidated with weeds and grass. They grow what crops they can and smuggle in as much food as they can from nearby villages. Their water was cut off two years ago.
“We are seeing our children starting to look like skeletons, our one-year-old babies like three-month olds,” Sawsan al-Abaar, one of 47 women who sent an open letter outlining their struggle to feed their children, told Middle East Eye. “We are counting on the conscience of the world to help.”