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UN concerns mount over besieged Syrians

The UN humanitarian affairs chief has expressed deep concern for communities cut off in Syria by months of fighting between government and rebel forces.


Valerie Amos told the BBC she had heard accounts of near starvation, including in the capital, Damascus.

Baroness Amos, who is in Syria, said she had spoken to the government about trying to get humanitarian access.

She said the situation in the country was getting worse by the day and she had heard horrific tales of suffering.

The situation on the ground keeps shifting, but a confidential UN document leaked to the BBC in late December said more than a quarter of a million Syrians are stuck in "besieged or hard to access areas".

Starving an area is a war crime. In Syria, food is a weapon of war used by all sides as they try to gain ground militarily, says the BBC's Lyse Doucet.

The uprising began in March 2011 and the UN says more than 100,000 people have died in the conflict.

Her visit comes less than two weeks before the planned start of an international conference in Switzerland to find a political solution to the war.

Foreign ministers from 11 countries that back the Syrian opposition movement are meeting in Paris - with the aim to persuade the opposition to attend the Geneva II talks.

The Syrian National Coalition asserts President Bashar al-Assad has no intention of negotiating his own departure, especially now that the military opposition is itself compromised by the rise of Islamist groups.

There is an almost complete disconnect between the effective forces on the ground inside the country, and the Western-backed Coalition - which claims to be the sole representative of the Syrian people, says BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir.

'Unimaginable'

Baroness Amos said she was "really worried" about people in communities who had been besieged for long periods, in some cases for more than a year.

"The sick and wounded have not been able to leave, we've not been able to get food in.

"There are reports of people on the brink of starvation including in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp close to the centre of Damascus," she told the BBC.

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