Aid Due to Arrive in Besieged Towns
Aid is due to arrived in the besieged towns of Madaya, Fuaa and Kafraya as soon as Monday, NPR reports.
The food aid branch of the U.N. confirmed over the weekend that aid trucks are expected to reach the besieged towns within the next few days. Convoys destined for Madaya were delayed due to “logistical reasons,” according to a spokesperson for the ICRC. It is likely the trucks faced difficulty navigating across various battlefronts.
Madaya, a resort town near the Lebanese border, has been without food aid since October, and accounts from within the town describe residents eating grass, leaves and pets to survive.
NPR’s Middle East correspondent Alice Fordham said: “Both sides are using siege tactics, but harrowing reports from Madaya, described as credible by the U.N., suggest the hunger is more severe there.”
According to Doctors Without Borders, nearly two dozen people have died of hunger in Madaya since December.
Syria’s al-Qaida Affiliate Detains Prominent Media Activists
The al-Nusra Front briefly detained two well-known opposition media activists on Sunday who work at a radio station based in northwestern Idib, AFP reports.
Raed Fares and Hadi al-Abdallah were detained by Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate for about 12 hours, Radio Fresh said in a statement posted on Facebook.
The two were abducted and interrogated, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, because the radio had “broadcast content against Islamic law, like songs, in violation of an agreement.”
Soner Taleb, media head for the opposition’s Syrian National Council, announced their abduction on Sunday, saying they had been seized from the Radio Fresh headquarters in Kafranbel.
Fresh FM’s director, Raed Fares, had previously been detained by the extremist group for what it deemed to be the station’s “secular tendency and support of apostates,” according to Taleb.
Fresh FM’s post on Facebook said al-Nusra fighters stormed the radio’s offices, confiscating its broadcasting equipment, electricity generators and revolution flags before arresting Fares and his colleague.
Russian Strikes on al-Nusra Prison Kill 57: Monitor
Russian airstrikes on a detention facility run by the al-Nusra Front, Syria’s al-Qaida affiliate, killed at least 57 people and wounded 30 others, AFP reports.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, air raids on the prison complex near a popular market in Idlib Saturday killed 21 civilians, 29 militants and seven detainees.
The building, located in Maarat al-Numan, housed both a prison and the group’s religious court.
“The toll from the Russian raids on the al-Qaida-run prison has risen to at least 57 killed and 30 wounded, many in critical condition,” the Observatory said in correction of an earlier statement that had given a toll of 39 dead.
Moscow militarily intervened in Syria at the end of September 2015 with the ostensible aim of supporting the Syrian government’s fight against the so-called Islamic State and “other terrorist groups.”
Recommended Reads
- Al-Jazeera: Nearly 400,000 Syrians Starving in Besieged Areas
- The Daily Beast: Russia Is Arming Hezbollah, Say Two of the Group’s Field Commanders
- Human Rights Watch: Syria: Give Besieged Areas Urgent Aid Access
- The National: Iran Won’t Surrender Militias that Conduct Assad’s War
- CBS: The Road to Syria
Top image: Hussein Yahya Darwish, 19, who was evacuated from the village of Kfarya, receives treatment from a nurse on Wednesday Dec. 30, 2015, as he lies in a bed in a hospital south of Beirut run by the militant Hezbollah group, Lebanon. Pro-government Syrian fighters who were recently evacuated from two besieged Shiite villages in northern Syria say residents there live under harsh conditions where people can hardly find medicine or even food to eat making some rely on grass in order to survive. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)