Britain under pressure to send aid to starving Syrian town

Senior British politicians are leading calls for the RAF to drop aid to the besieged Syrian town of Madaya where thousands of civilians are starving to death, the Telegraph newspaper said in a report Saturday.

Although the Syrian regime has said it will allow aid to enter the town, this will be too late for many who are already close to starvation.

At least 23 people died of starvation in Madaya last month and aid agencies have warned that more will die in the coming days, the report said.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Lord Ashdown, the former Liberal Democrat leader, and Jo Cox, a Labour MP, urged the Government to “strongly consider airdropping aid to those communities at risk of starvation” if the UN is denied adequate access to the town.

Besieged by regime forces and Hezbollah since July, Madaya’s 40,000 residents have been reduced to eating boiled strawberry leaves. Photographs taken in the town show the shriveled corpses of old men and pinched faces of starving infants.

Invoking a precedent set last year when the RAF dropped aid to thousands of Yazidis fleeing genocide at the hands of Daesh, Lord Ashdown and Ms Cox said: “There are immediate steps we can take to stop more vulnerable people dying needlessly of hunger. We cannot sit by and watch this happen.”

According to local doctors, 13 people have been killed as they tried to escape in search of food. Some stepped on the landmines which now surround the town, others were shot by snipers.

“There is no way in or out, leaving the people to die,” said Brice de le Vingne, the director of Doctors without Borders. He said local doctors had been forced to feed children using medical syrups as the only available source of sugar and energy.
As well as almost 17,000 of its own residents, Madaya is now home to another 17,000 people who have fled fighting in nearby Zabadani. The towns form the last opposition enclave along the Lebanese border, just sit just 25 miles from the presidential palace of Bashar al-Assad.

British military commanders have so far ruled out a similar airdrop to that seen in Iraq last year. RAF sources said while Sinjar in northern Iraq had been safe for military aircraft to reach, Madaya was in territory held by the hostile Syrian regime with access to sophisticated surface to air missiles.

One source said: "Mount Sinjar, that was in an area where the democratically elected government of that country wanted us to go and do something. Madaya is somewhat different to that.

"The air environment is totally different in central and southern Syria. There are surface to air missiles and it's right in the heartland of the regime. For the allies to start barreling in there with aircraft could be catastrophic."

Madaya is six miles from Syria's western border with Lebanon - or 40 seconds flying time for a C130 Hercules transport aircraft.

Efforts to relieve the starving population will be led by a UN road convoy this weekend, backed by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Source: MENA