HAMOURIA, Syria: Manal boils water on the stove in the besieged Syrian town of Hamouria, hoping to convince her four children that she is cooking, but she has no food.
She puts the pot on the flame as a ruse, waiting for the children to fall asleep in the dilapidated house before they realize there is nothing for dinner.
In the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta region where she lives, over 1,100 children are suffering acute malnutrition, and hundreds more are at risk because of food shortages caused by a government siege.
Aid agencies warn the situation is worsening, despite an international agreement to implement a “de-escalation zone” in the area, which has decreased violence but led to no new access for food, medicine and humanitarian aid.
“They haven’t eaten anything but bread for the last three days,” Manal told AFP in tears.
“A neighbor gave us the flour.”
Eastern Ghouta, which lies outside the capital Damascus, was once a prime agricultural region.
But the rebel stronghold has been under a tight government siege since 2013, causing shortages of food and medicine, and pushing up prices for what remains on the market, produced locally or smuggled in.
The region has been devastated by years of fighting, with government air strikes and shelling bringing down multi-story buildings and rendering whole streets uninhabitable.
Basic services for the region’s estimated 400,000 residents are virtually non-existent, with electricity produced only by generators and the water available often dirty and a vector for illness.
Manal’s husband Abu Azzam is unable to work because of a serious injury he sustained in a shelling attack in their old home elsewhere in Eastern Ghouta several years ago.
The attack killed one of their children, and left another, Azzam, missing a foot and dependent on crutches to get around.
The family are desperately poor and have sold most of their furniture to afford food.
“In 24 hours, we have a single meal, which is not enough for the children,” said Abu Azzam in despair.
Ordinarily, the family might hope for assistance from aid groups, but humanitarian access to Eastern Ghouta has been vanishingly rare throughout the conflict that began with anti-government protests in March 2011.
Aid convoys can only enter with government permission, with just two accessing the region since August, carrying assistance for fewer than 100,000 people.
In July, a “de-escalation zone” was implemented in Eastern Ghouta under a deal agreed by government allies Russian and Iran and rebel backer Turkey.
The agreement was meant to improve humanitarian access, but Russian forces “did two distributions at a checkpoint and since then stopped,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor.
“Humanitarian needs in Eastern Ghouta are huge, and more needs to be done,” said Ingy Sedky, spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“The situation is getting worse,” she added.
“We know from past experience that such situations, where the population depends on the provision of humanitarian aid for its very basic needs, can deteriorate very quickly, and reach tragic proportions.”
For some families, tragedy has already arrived.
Malnutrition
At least two children are reported to have died from malnutrition or its complications this month, among them 34-day-old Sahar Dofdaa, whose emaciated form, swamped by her diaper, appeared in shocking images beamed around the world over the weekend.
She weighed less than 2kg before she died Sunday at a hospital in Hamouria.
Doctor Yayha Abu Yayha, who works at the hospital where Sahar died, said a key cause of infant malnutrition was that undernourished mothers were unable to feed their babies.
“The basic nutrients that breastfeeding mothers need are not available,” he said.
“Most of them have anaemia and deficiences of vitamins A and D, as well as zinc and iron.”
“Their bodies are weak, and so their children’s bodies are weak,” he said.
Another factor is poor hygiene caused by dire living conditions, lack of running water, and lack of clean water, he said.
Illnesses like diarrhea can quickly leave even well-fed children underweight.
The UN’s children’s fund UNICEF said 232 children in Eastern Ghouta were suffering from severe acute malnutrition, which requires urgent treatment if the child is to survive.
Another 882 were suffering moderate acute malnutrition, with more than 1,500 other children at risk, a spokeswoman said.
“All I want is to see my children with full bellies,” said Abu Azzam.
“I hope the day will come when we’ll be able to eat three meals a day.”
Hot water for dinner in hunger-hit besieged Syria town
Hot water for dinner in hunger-hit besieged Syria town
King Charles donates to International Rescue Committee’s Syria aid operation
- Donation will fund healthcare, protect children, provide emergency cash
LONDON: King Charles III has helped pay for urgent humanitarian aid needed in Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad.
Charles made an undisclosed donation to International Rescue Committee UK to fund healthcare, protect children and provide emergency cash.
The king is the patron of the charity, which says Syria is facing profound humanitarian needs despite the defeat of the Assad regime by opposition forces.
Khusbu Patel, IRC UK’s acting executive director, said: “His Majesty’s contribution underscores his deep commitment to addressing urgent global challenges, and helping people affected by humanitarian crises to survive, recover and rebuild their lives.
“We are immensely grateful to His Majesty The King for his donation supporting our work in Syria. This assistance will enable us to provide essential services, including healthcare, child protection and emergency cash, to those people most in need.”
The charity said it was scaling-up its efforts in northern Syria to evaluate the urgent needs of communities. Towns and villages have become accessible to aid groups for the first time in years now that rebel forces have taken control of much of the country.
The charity said Syria ranks fourth on its emergency watchlist for 2025 and a recent assessment found that people in the northeast of the country were facing unsafe childbirth conditions, cold-related illnesses, water contamination, and shortages of medical supplies.
Charles last month said he would be “praying for Syria” as he attended a church service in London attended by various faiths.
The king met Syrian nun Sister Annie Demerjian at the event, who described the situation in her homeland after the regime had been swept from power.
After Ocalan visit, Turkiye opposition MPs brief speaker, far-right leader
ISTANBUL: A delegation from Turkiye’s pro-Kurdish opposition DEM party met Thursday with the parliamentary speaker and far-right MHP leader amid tentative efforts to resume dialogue between Ankara and the banned PKK militant group. DEM’s three-person delegation met with Speaker Numan Kurtulmus and then with MHP leader Devlet Bahceli.
The aim was to brief them on a rare weekend meeting with Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party who is serving life without parole on Imrali prison island near Istanbul.
It was the Ocalan’s first political visit in almost a decade and follows an easing of tension between Ankara and the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency on Turkish soil and is proscribed by Washington and Brussels as a terror group.
The visit took place two months after Bahceli extended a surprise olive branch to Ocalan, inviting him to parliament to disband the PKK and saying he should be given the “right to hope” in remarks understood to moot a possible early release.
Backed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the tentative opening came a month before Syrian rebels began a lightning 12-day offensive that ousted Bashar Assad in a move which has forced Turkiye’s concerns about the Kurdish issue into the headlines.
During Saturday’s meeting with DEM lawmakers Sirri Sureyya Onder and Pervin Buldan, Ocalan said he had “the competence and determination to make a positive contribution to the new paradigm started by Mr.Bahceli and Mr.Erdogan.”
Onder and Buldan then “began a round of meetings with the parliamentary parties” and were joined on Thursday by Ahmet Turk, 82, a veteran Kurdish politician with a long history of involvement in efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue.
Iraq’s Sulaimaniyah city bans groups accused of PKK links
SULAIMANIYAH: Authorities in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah have banned four organizations accused of affiliation with the Turkish-blacklisted Kurdistan Workers Party, activists said Thursday, denouncing the move as “political.”
The four organizations include two feminist groups and a media production house, according to the METRO center for press freedoms which organized a news conference in Sulaimaniyah to criticize the decision.
PKK fighters have several positions in Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which also hosts Turkish military bases used to strike Kurdish insurgents.
Ankara and Washington both deem the PKK, which has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkiye, a terrorist organization.
Authorities in Sulaimaniyah, the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s second city, have been accused of leniency toward PKK activities.
But the Iraqi federal authorities in Baghdad have recently sharpened their tone against the Turkish Kurdish insurgents.
Col. Salam Abdel Khaleq, the spokesman for the Kurdish Asayesh security forces in Sulaimaniyah, told AFP that the bans came “after a decision from the Iraqi judiciary and as a result of the expiration of the licenses” of these groups.
Israeli military says commandos raided missile plant in Syria in September
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said on Thursday its special forces raided an underground missile production site in Syria in September that it said was primed to produce hundreds of precision missiles for use against Israel by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
The complex near Masyaf, in Hama province close to the Mediterranean coast, was “the flagship of Iranian manufacturing efforts in our region,” Israeli military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told a briefing with reporters.
“This facility was designed to manufacture hundreds of strategic missiles per year from start to finish, for Hezbollah to use in their aerial attacks on Israel,” he said.
He said the plant, dug into the side of a mountain, had been under observation by Israeli intelligence since construction work began in 2017 and was on the point of being able to manufacture precision-guided long-range missiles, some of them with a range of up to 300 km (190 miles).
“This ability was becoming active, so we’re talking about an immediate threat,” he said.
Details of the Sept. 8 raid have been reported in the Israeli media in recent days but Shoshani said this was the first confirmation by the military, which usually does not comment on special forces operations of this type.
At the time, Syrian state media said at least 16 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the west of the country.
Shoshani said the hours-long nighttime raid was “one of the more complex operations the IDF has done in recent years.” Accompanied by airstrikes, it involved dozens of aircraft and around 100 helicopter-borne troops, who located weapons and seized documents, he said.
“At the end of the raid, the troops dismantled the facility, including the machines and the manufacturing equipment themselves,” he said, adding that dismantling the plant was “key to ensure the safety of Israel.”
Israeli officials have accused the former Syrian government of President Bahar Assad of helping the Lebanese-based Hezbollah movement receive arms from Iran and say they are determined to stop the flow of weapons into Lebanon.
As Bashar Assad’s government crumbled toward the end of last year, Israel launched a series of strikes against Syrian military infrastructure and weapons manufacturing sites to ensure they did not fall into the hands of its enemies.
