Syria is blocking aid to thousands of its civilians, UN is warned

The Syrian regime is preventing the distribution of humanitarian aid to tens of thousands of its citizens, and "concrete" action by the United Nations Security Council is required to prevent their deaths, the UN's British under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs has warned.

In a war characterised by "breathtaking levels of savagery", Baroness Amos said, the Syrian government "continues to put in place measures that are not practical and slow down our response. Time is running out. More people will die."

In the past year Damascus has given the UN access to just three of the 33 besieged towns and cities it has tried to reach, leaving entire communities suffering with little food, clean water or medication.

As well as demanding that the aid effort first seek permission from a string of its ministries, Syrian troops have removed medical supplies from two convoys granted access, Lady Amos told the Security Council.

President Bashar al-Assad's regime has long kept aid agencies that operate in the country on a tight leash, largely preventing their access to civilians living in opposition-held areas that its army has placed under siege.

^{A man walks through the rubble following air strikes by government forces helicopters on the eastern Shaar neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo}

A UN Security Council resolution last year demanded humanitarian aid access to civilians caught in the war. But that has been flagrantly ignored by all fighting parties.

The number of citizens living under blockade, at risk from dehydration, starvation and death, has doubled in the last year.

Many of these 440,000 men, women and children are under siege by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and other opposition groups.

However, Lady Amos said, as many as 185,500 people are trapped by the government, "despite their assertions that they have a responsibility to look after their own people".

Footage published online from Yarmouk, a besieged suburb of Damascus, shows emaciated children near a dustbin picking up a few individual grains of rice that lie on the ground.

In a recent spate of appearances on foreign media outlets, President Assad has indicated that his government may be open to a form of rapprochement with western governments.

Mr Assad told CBS news this week that he would be "open" to a dialogue with the United States, based on "mutual respect".

But, on the ground in Syria, his troops continue to violate UN resolutions and international conventions on war.

^{A view through the scope of a weapon belonging to an Ahrar al-Sham Islamic Movement rebel fighter in the northwestern city of Idlib}

Lady Amos said "the authority of this Council is being undermined. People trapped in besieged locations are becoming more and more desperate."

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the global chemical weapons watchdog, said on Friday that it will investigate allegations of a chlorine gas attack on a Syrian village in northern Idlib province that reportedly killed six people and wounded dozens earlier this month.

The attack on Sarmin came 10 days after the United Nations Security Council condemned the use of chlorine as a weapon in Syria and threatened to take action if such arms are used again in the conflict.

The regime has denied point blank dropping chlorine gas bombs from its helicopters. But first hand testimony from victims and eye witnesses, video footage and scientific testing of soil samples in the area points to the contrary.

An investigation by this newspaper last year revealed the Syrian air force has dropped dozens of chlorine gas bombs on villages located near hotly contested front lines.

A fact-finding mission by the OPCW on those attacks also found that the use of chlorine has been "systematic" in the Syrian civil war.