Hezbollah is slowly starving 40,000 Syrian civilians in a siege of Madaya

Using landmines and armed troops Hezbollah prevents the people from leaving.

It is instructive to note that in a properly constructed siege the people begin to starve within 6 months.

Hezbollah should use Gaza as a model and send them food, electricity and medical supplies.

(The Independent) Up to 40,000 civilians are slowly starving to death in the Syrian town of Madaya, activists have warned, after six months under a punishing siege.

Encircled by land mines and forces from the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, hundreds are suffering from malnutrition. With severe shortages of basic foodstuffs, many have resorted to eating wild plants, insects and even cats.

A media activist in the town, who used the pseudonym Nasir Ibrahim to protect his family, said that on New Year’s Eve he had managed to eat 50g of rice. Today, with snow covering the mountain-top town, he expected to go hungry. “The humanitarian situation is very dangerous,” he told The Independent. “Many have died starving and many more will follow them if no immediate aid is allowed in.” [...]

[...] as part of its efforts to force the coalition to relinquish Kafrayya and Fua, Hezbollah had forced residents in the areas surrounding the predominantly Sunni Muslim Madaya to move into the town. It was slowly forcing them to starve in a bid to ease conditions for the two Shia towns, he said.

It is a view echoed by the pro-opposition monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has claimed that the Syrian army and Hezbollah is using Madaya as a tool to break the sieges against Shia civilians. It accused the international community of “silence” in the face of extreme human suffering. Earlier this week an exchange of wounded fighters and civilians from Zabadani, Kafraya and Fua took place in a rare UN-backed local truce. But Madaya remains encircled.

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