BEIRUT: Residents of a Syrian town besieged by President Bashar Al Assad’s forces appealed to the world to “save us from death” in an open letter describing desperate conditions and suffering.
Hundreds of men, women and children in Mouadamiya had died and thousands had been wounded, they said.
Mouadamiya, on the southwest outskirts of the capital Damascus, was occupied by anti-Assad rebels last year and the government has been trying to win it back since then. “For nearly one year, the city of Mouadamiya has been under siege with no access to food, electricity, medicine, communications, and fuel,” said the letter, distributed by the opposition Syrian National Council yesterday. “We have been hit by rockets, artillery shells, napalm, white phosphorous, and chemical weapons,” it said.
The writers, who did not give their names, said they had managed to find enough power to run a computer and connect to the internet to send the letter. The SNC said nearly 12,000 people face starvation and death in Mouadamiya. About 90 percent of Mouadamiya has been destroyed, few doctors remained, and residents were eating “leaves of trees”.
United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said last week that despite the government evacuating 3,000 people this month, thousands more remain trapped inside Mouadamiya.
She said that United Nations teams had been denied access.
Local doctors have said that hunger has become severe in recent months. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring organisation said on Monday that rebels and government forces clashed on the edges of Mouadamiya overnight and the army bombed the town. “We appeal to your sense of humanity not to forget us,” the residents’ letter said. “We implore you to deliver our message to the whole world.
“Save us from death. Save us from the hell of Assad’s killing machine.” More than 100,000 people have died during the war, which started with peaceful protests against four decades of Assad family rule in March 2011 then escalated into a civil war with sectarian overtones.
Reuters
