Desperately Cheating Death

"Sometimes we do this ... drink some water with some sugar or some salt and go back  to sleep. But when you go to the street you will find maybe the people next door ... they're dead."
Syrian witness

"Infants are suffering the most. Nursing mothers can't feed their babies as they are too weak from hunger. We search everywhere for milk, and when find it we mix it with water."
Father Frans van der Lugt

• Dutch Jesuit Father Frans van der Lugt gestures inside a monastery where he collected most of the the icons from damaged churches in the besieged area of Homs, February 2, 2014. Van der Lugt, who is living in the besieged area, made an appeal for help on a YouTube video few days ago, shedding light on the conditions inside, which is suffering severe food and medical shortages. He said that there are 66 Christians left in the besieged areas of Homs. REUTERS

Father van der Lugt has written of the devastation to the civilians among whom he lives in Homs, desperate in their starvation, and becoming mentally unhinged in the process. He has appealed to the outside world to make an effort to find some compassion in their hearts for these starving people of Syria whose president is using the world's oldest lethal weapon of mass destruction in vengeance against his Sunni majority population for harbouring "terrorists".

While Syrian civilians who have fled the carnage in their country to safety in other, neighbouring countries hard-pressed even with the help of the United Nations and other relief agencies to cope with their needs complain of the quality of the food and their accommodations, they do not starve, nor must they cope with the maddening incidence of regime military attacks on their already-demolished homes.

Refugees living in the Yarmouk camp near Damascus are also starving and growing weaker by the day. Losing hair and teeth, they are dying. In Yarmouk, the 20,000 internally displaced refugees are desperately eating cactus, cats and grass to try to remain in the land of the living. The Syrian regime of President al-Assad refuses to permit relief vehicles to enter because "terrorists" have refuge within the camp.

Who needs sarin or barrel bombs when siege and patience can produce the same results, with fewer messes to clean up afterward? "We hope this first step will succeed and will continue tomorrow and after tomorrow and so on to ensure safe exit to all civilians who want to leave the old city", Talal al-Barazi, governor of Homs, gravely stated on Syrian state television.

Under the bad-tempered deal agreed upon by the regime and the opposition, achieved with energetic urging, huge hope and patience by the UN's envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, three days of cease-fire were agreed upon to enable evacuation of civilians from Homs, and to allow humanitarian aid into the areas under siege for those who refused to leave.

Weary, gaunt and ill the first lot of 80 people boarded minibuses accompanied by Syrian Arab Red Crescent officials, finally released from their 15-month ordeal under fire from the government; access to electricity, food or clean water denied them. Some surviving on olives. Starving people fell voraciously on food offered to them by aid workers.

"I don't care about Geneva. But I am using whatever chance I can to get aid to those poor people (inside the siege). Any sane person would have cancelled the operation after yesterday (Saturday). But we know there are people in need inside."
Khaled Erksoussi, head of operations, Syrian Arab Red Crescent

On Sunday, aid workers attempting again to enter the Old City came under heavy fire. Videos showed hundreds of dishevelled, gaunt people, the result of 600 days living under siege, shuffling along a devastated street, heading toward UN vehicles. Then a mortar exploding close by, a government token of goodwill to its dependents, killing nine people in the process.