More than a dozen people have died in the suburb of Moadhamiya in recent weeks, many of them from starvation or a lack of basic medicine. It is one of a string of sieges across the country that have slowed UN-brokered negotiations in Geneva, as opposition delegates are refusing to enter into talks with a regime that they say is intentionally starving more than a million civilians.
In Moadhamiya, the situation has worsened even as the talks get under way. “Almost every day we are witnessing the death of one child. Most of the deaths have been children under 6 months,” Abu Samer, one of the last doctors working in the besieged suburb, said in a video posted on YouTube.
"We are suffering. We are useless in this situation. We have nothing to do to save them while they are passing away in front of our eyes."
The Telegraph has seen photographs said to show three of those infants. In each image, the child’s distended ribs wrap a swollen belly, which doctors say is a classic sign of starvation.
The UN’s special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, was due to meet with Syrian opposition figures in Geneva on Monday in an attempt to kick start talks that had been due to open last week.
The process will involve “proximity talks”, rather than face-to-face sessions, meaning that he plans to keep the delegations in separate rooms and shuttle between them.
The opposition delegation, known as the High Negotiations Committee, or HNC, said it would be meeting Mr de Mistura after receiving reassurances from several countries as well as the UN that its demands on lifting sieges in opposition -held areas and an end to aerial bombardment of civilians would be met.
But on the ground in Syria, the situation has, if anything, got worse. Several Moadhamiya residents told The Telegraph that barrel bombs were being launched on the city at a rate of between 40 and 60 a day, ratcheting up the strain on the area’s buckling clinics. Photographs taken over the weekend show horrific injuries and a floor awash with blood.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said on Monday that 47 Syrian civilians had been killed in bombardment by Russia and the regime since the regime’s delegation arrived in Geneva on Friday.
Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the UN’s top human rights official, said on Monday that the use of starvation as a military tactic should be treated as a war crime and prosecuted, rather than included in any future amnesty.
Pointing to deaths in towns including Madaya, where the UN suggested air drops be considered to help starving residents, he said this was “not just a war crime but a crime against humanity".
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