With their stockpile of food dwindling rapidly and government forces tightening their stranglehold, the Khattab family dreads what could come next. A brutal government blockade of rebel-held eastern Aleppo has brought the city to the brink of starvation, while punishing airstrikes have turned trips to local markets into life-or-death excursions.
Over the weekend, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces made major advances against the remaining rebel enclaves and even as thousands flee, many others are refusing to leave, fearing capture by the government forces.
Those fleeing are leaving home without the precious remnants of their food while those staying have very little left after years of war and months of a total blockade.
“We’re only eating two small meals a day now, and it’s just rice and cracked wheat,” said Moataz Khattab, 26, who lives with nine family members. “We eat together, what we can, but we are losing so much weight. We’re running out of supplies, and now we talk about starving to death.”
Last week, Jan Egeland, a senior U.N. humanitarian adviser, warned of impending starvation if efforts to bring in aid continue to falter.
Since Sunday, rebel defenses in Aleppo — divided since 2012 between rebels in the east and government-held districts in the west — have started unraveling. Government forces have seized more than a third of the rebel-held east, causing more than 16,000 people to flee the area, according to Stephen O’Brian, the U.N. humanitarian chief.
What comes next could be a final deadly assault or an even tighter siege to starve the remaining rebels into submission. For the last four months, Assad’s forces had blockaded more than 200,000 people — nearly half of them children — in the east, according to U.N. officials.
Those who are still trapped there must contend with frigid winter temperatures and lack of access to fresh supplies of food and other essentials, such drinking water, fuel and medicine.
“Everyday, my children ask me for food that is not available. They want fruit. They want chicken. They’re hungry. But it’s not available,” said Ali al-Halabi, a 36-year-old father of three who lives in the area.
He has reduced his family’s meals from three per day to two, and he’s begun contemplating eating just once daily himself. The family food stockpile has almost been exhausted, he said.
Aleppo, the nation’s commercial hub and its largest city, was once a symbol of the rebellion against Assad. Half the districts of the city fell quickly to the rebels in 2012 and it was expected to become the staging ground for the Syrian leader’s eventual overthrow.
That overthrow never came, however, and nearly 400,000 people were killed in the brutal civil war that saw Russia, Iran and other Syrian allies step in to support the regime and turn the tide of the war.
Now eastern Aleppo is a symbol of desperation. Airstrikes have laid waste to hospitals, homes and much of the infrastructure, with people surviving on vegetables grown in backyard plots.
Its residents know what horrors still await them, having watched rebel-controlled towns and neighborhoods across the country succumb to brutally effective government tactics of starvation sieges.
U.N. officials and aid workers say scores of Syrians have died under these blockades from the effects of malnutrition.
Dozens alone just in the town of Madaya, west of Damascus, died of starvation when the food ran out. The world was shocked earlier this year by a flurry of images from Madaya that showed residents looking deathly ill, some so thin that they resembled walking skeletons.
Khattab, who himself has already shed 15 pounds just in the past few weeks, actually thinks his family is fairly lucky, considering the situation. They stockpiled a relatively large amount of food, although they have now whittled down their supplies to alarmingly low levels.
The family’s less fortunate neighbors have already run out of food, and one boy in Khattab’s district is close to starving to death, he said. “He has become a skeleton,” Khattab said of the boy. “Neighbors donated food to him, but it won’t last long.”
Khattab’s mother, 52-year-old Hend, still tries to make creative meals for the family using the remaining supplies of lentils and rice. But the declining portion sizes — and lack of nutrients — are taking a toll, especially on younger family members.
He is particularly concerned for his 10-year-old brother, Mohammed. “He’s so young, and he’s not getting the foods he needs to be healthy. It’s dangerous for him.”
For Khattab, it is an effort just to make it out the door each day to pursue his work as a freelance photographer chronicling the devastating aftermaths of countless airstrikes.
“You just can’t work. You just stay at home, rest, and that’s it. You don’t have energy,” said Khattab.
It is a condition afflicting many of the young men that keep the city running. Raed al-Saleh, the head of the Syria Civil Defense Force or “White Helmets,” said his team of intrepid volunteers, who play a vital role in retrieving people from the wreckage of buildings bombed by government forces, show signs of worsening fatigue from a lack of food.
That makes saving lives even harder for White Helmet rescuers such as Abu Laith, 26, who now subsists on rice.
“These are the worst days of the war,” he said. “We’re exhausted. We’re so exhausted.”
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