Afflicted, hopeless Syrians leave besieged town

"The brother is killing his own brother, the father is killing his son and vice versa ... This can't continue," an old man said of the Syrian crisis when he walked out of the besieged town of al-Muadamyeh in the countryside of Damascus on Tuesday. Collapsing into tears, the 83-year-old did not trust himself to look up in the eyes of reporters waiting at the exit of al-Muadamyeh for evacuees from the town, which has been controlled by opposition fighters. After being trapped for months, around 2,000 people were allowed to flee the conflict zone in al-Muadamyeh on Tuesday, reportedly under rare coordination between government troops and rebels, and they would soon be sent to safer displacement shelters near the capital. Some 5,000 others had been evacuated earlier. Pale and hopeless faces kept arriving at the town's border. Dry and cracked lips were many. Some even turned unconscious while Syrian Red Crescent volunteers rushed to them with water and biscuits. "There is no food or water in al-Muadamyeh and we have got out with a fresh soul," a 40-year-old man said. Meanwhile, a woman, dragging her little girl and holding heavy luggage, called the rebels inside al-Muadamyeh "terrorists" who were "making us starve." "We have been trying to get out for several times, but each time we tried to leave, something would happen and we'd get back," she said. The initiative to free the trapped people was taken under the auspices of the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Syrian Red Crescent, and the International Support Team for Reconciliation. "We try to be mediators, to hear everybody to value everybody," Agnes Mariam, a member of the support team, said during the evacuation mission, the fourth in a month. From what she saw, the 61-year-old Lebanese-born nun believed there is still hope for reconciliation to be achieved to end the protracted crisis. In one of the evacuation attempts, "we saw militiamen, the rebels, the young men, with their arms here with the soldiers of the Syrian army shaking hands and exchanging cigarettes in a very natural mood," she said. "For me it was a confirmation that there is another approach, a third way." On Tuesday, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) made an appeal calling on all parties in the Syrian conflict to respect the work of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and to guarantee the safety of aid workers and their unimpeded, immediate access to people in need across Syria. "The humanitarian tragedy that continues unabated in Syria today is unacceptable" and "22 Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteers have been killed and many more injured, kidnapped or detained while carrying out their humanitarian duties," said the Red Cross. Beyond safe access, increased support is also needed to be able to assist the more than 2.5 million people in dire need each month. The appeal came at a time when the international community is poised to convene the long-awaited Geneva II conference on Syria, which aims to bring the government and the opposition to one table by the end of November to hammer out a political solution that could end the suffering of all Syrians. Source: XINHUA