Syria agrees to facilitate aid flow into three villages: UN

The United Nations says the Syrian government has agreed to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance to three villages, amid reports of deaths due to acute malnutrition there.

The UN welcomed Syria's decision to allow the flow of relief aid into the northern villages of Foua and Kfarya in Idlib Province as well as Madaya near the Lebanese border.

In a Thursday statement, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Syria Yacoub el-Hillo said the world body would begin delivering aid to the villages in the coming days.

The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) has also said its trucks could begin carrying aid into the three areas if access is secured.

Syria Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem is expected to discuss the issue of aid delivery with UN envoy Staffan de Mistura.

The envoy is scheduled to visit Damascus for talks with senior officials on a peace process aimed at ending the deadly crisis plaguing the Arab state.

The permission came after reports that several people had starved to death in the three villages over the past weeks.

On Thursday, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said 23 patients, including an infant and five elderly, had died of starvation at a facility run by the France-based medical aid group in one of the three villages since last December.

There are 30,000 people in Foua and Kfarya, while “almost 42,000 people remaining in Madaya are at risk of further hunger and starvation,” el-Hillo warned.

Militant sources and certain media outlets have blamed government forces and allied fighters with Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah operating against terrorists for the humanitarian crisis in Madaya.

However, Hezbollah on Thursday strongly rejected the false accusations and the media “propaganda” targeting resistance fighters. It also held the militants responsible for the severe food shortage in Madaya, Lebanon’s al-Manar television reported.

Hezbollah also criticized biased reports on the humanitarian situation in Madaya and the two other villages in northern Syria.

Al-Manar quoted sources on the ground as saying that terrorist groups had confiscated dozens of trucks loaded with aid packages and sold their food supplies to residents of Madaya in the recent past.

According to the UN, up to 4.5 million people live in hard-to-reach areas of Syria, which has witnessed a deadly crisis fueled by foreign-backed Takfiri terrorists since March 2011.

More than 260, 000 people have reportedly lost their lives and millions of others have been forced to flee their homes due to the violence.

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