Photos: Aid entry for Madaya could not save Diab Abdul Rahman

(Zaman Al Wasl- Photos)- Diab Abdul Rahman, 45-year-old, has been documented as the first hunger victim died of starvation after the entry of the long-awaited aid for the besieged town of Madaya on Monday.

Abdul Rahman's emaciated body was the ugly face of Bashar al-Assad’s war crime in Madaya, in support of  his allied Hezbollah militia, activists said.

40, 000 people are still trapped, 65 of them have starved to death and thousands others are suffering critical health conditions due to the 6-month-old siege.

Aid trucks entered Madaya, near the Lebanese border, and two villages in the northwest of the country on Monday, the Red Cross said, as part of an agreement between rival sides.

The vehicles were to simultaneously enter rebel-held Madaya, which has been blockaded for months by pro-government forces and where aid agencies have warned of widespread starvation, and Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, which are encircled by rebel groups, including the al-Nusra Front.

The blockade of Madaya has become a focal issue for Syrian opposition leaders who told a United Nations envoy last week that they would not take part in talks with the government until it and other sieges are lifted.

The UN said on Thursday that the Syrian government had agreed to allow access to Madaya, where the world body says there have been credible reports of people dying of starvation.

The ongoing Syrian conflict started as a largely unarmed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011, but morphed into a full-blown civil war that has killed more than 260,000 people and turned more than 4.3 million others into refugees, according to statistics by the UN.
Blockades have been a common feature of the nearly five-year-old conflict.