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Syria government 'using starvation as a weapon of war'
President Bashar al-Assad's government is using starvation tactics against the Syrian people as a weapon of war, Amnesty International said. A new report by the group said 128 refugees died of starvation at the Yarmouk camp in Damascus.
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Amnesty: Civilians treated like 'pawns in a deadly game'
An Amnesty International report has said that the civilians in Syria are being treated like 'pawns in a deadly game'.
Philip Luther, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa Programme director, said: “Civilians of Yarmouk are being treated like pawns in a deadly game in which they have no control.”
The report highlights that government forces and their allies have repeatedly carried out attacks, including air raids and shelling with heavy weapons, on civilian buildings such as schools, hospitals and a mosque in Yarmouk.
Syrian army accused of using starvation as a 'weapon'
The Syrian army has been accused of using starvation as a “weapon of war” in a siege on a refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, Amnesty International said.
The human rights watchdog said.said early 200 people, including 18 children and babies, have died since the army tightened a siege and cut access to food and medicine to civilians in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in July.
"Life in Yarmouk has grown increasingly unbearable for desperate civilians who find themselves starving and trapped in a downward cycle of suffering with no means of escape,” Philip Luther, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa Programme director, said in the report.