Truce is 'not valid' as breaches continue in Mouadamiya near Damascus: activists

Mouadamiya Al-Cham’s truce is just an ink on paper, that how it’s described by activist Mohammad Ghiath, who expressed his resentment of the deteriorating living conditions in the area.

The embattled town in southern Syria, administratively is a part of the Rif Dimashq Governorate, located 10km southwest of Damascus. Nearby localities include Darayya to the east.

People in the city are still facing starvation and diseases because of the suffocating besiege imposed on them by Assad's forces.

Violations began from the first day of truce, manifested in the indiscriminate arrests of citizens of the city while trying to enter it, in addition to sporadic clashes on the suburbs from time to time.

The regime also did not fulfill its promises of releasing the city’s estimated 650 detainees documented by Mouadamiya Media Center.

To make matter worse, the UN aid relief was distributed in the eastern district of Mouadamiya inhabited by Republican Guard and Fourth Division officers and their families and nothing reached the besieged people, according to activist Giath.

Rehearsed and paid interviews were conducted with pro-regime people in this neighborhood denouncing the international community and praising the alleged reconciliation.

These pictures and interviews were published as if it’s done with the besieged people, While all Al Mouadamiya’s passages were closed expect for one road controlled by regime forces and nothing entered the area for people to survive.

The international community and its organizations should bear the responsibility for people suffering due to the deteriorating conditions in the city, according to activists.

These conditions forced Mouadamiya’s people to issue a statement to the UN and the humanitarian organizations through the city’s media office denouncing regime’s inhuman and immoral practices in depriving them from their basic rights and necessities and misleading the world media, especially when humanitarian aid was sent recently under the auspices of the United Nations.

This statement clarified that the loaded nine cars of aid relief were distributed in the eastern district of the city, a neighborhood loyal to the regime.

The Syrian regime brought their shabiha to act as people’s representative, and they were: "Hassan Ghandour - Mohammed Ziad Damrany - Osama Arnous."

Those people tried to market regime’s side of the story to the international community, and world organizations that civilians in Mouadamiya refused UN aid to enter the city.

The alleged truce in the city is clearly a blazing coal under ashes, and people there are in turmoil due to the regime’s lack of commitment to the temporary truce, activists said. Reporting by Sara Abdul Hai; Translation by Dani Murad