LEBANON — In a devastating war that has already taken over 100,000 lives, survivors now face a miserable winter. Snow blanketed Syria this week, and bombed-out houses offer little protection.
Syria’s children have already been killed by bullets and bombs, air bombardment, improvised explosives and chemical weapons. An estimated 11,000 young people have been killed in just under three years — and now they are dying of cold.
There are reports that children as young as six months old have frozen to death, but those could not be verified by NBC News.
The United Nations made its first delivery of humanitarian aid by air to Syria from Iraq on Sunday, dropping food on the Hassakeh governorate, which had not received any significant since May, Reuters reported.
The U.N. plans to airlift more food, blankets, sleeping mats and kitchen sets to the northeast over the next two weeks after plans for ground shipments were scrapped due to the difficulty of negotiating with different factions on the ground.
Fear of the winter has given rise to desperation in the refugee camps where nothing more than tent sheeting stands between the displaced and the bitter cold.
In a United Nations depot in Akkar, in northern Lebanon, mother of six Wad al Jasem gathered wood for a fire to keep warm. She has just two mattresses and one blanket for herself, her son and five daughters.
There are blankets to be distributed, but they are set aside only for those living in the coldest conditions high in the mountains.
"This is my situation, look at it," said Wad, standing in a makeshift tent she had to call home, some 40 miles away. "When I don’t have money for gas, I cook on the stove."
She's from the Homs section of Syria. Her husband is still there, but she hasn't heard a word from him in three months and has no idea when, or if, they will be reunited.
"The days I get work I can feed my children, but I don’t get work every day," she said. "Nobody’s really giving us real help."
In Lebanon alone, there are hundreds of camps, thousands of families and up to a million refugees. Amnesty International says the West should "hang its head in shame" for the "pitiful" help it has offered them.
A group of desperate women at the refugee center surrounded me to tell their stories and beg for help.
"I have no money for the hospital," said one, whose husband is sick.
Another asks for helping reaching Europe. The Amnesty report says 2.2 million people have fled Syria, but Europe has offered to assist only 12,000.
Meanwhile, as the war grinds on, opposition fighters backed by the West are losing ground. Last week, the United States and its allies announced they were suspending supplies to moderate rebels, fearing that extremists were taking over.
Reuters contributed to this story
Related:
- UN confirms chemical weapons were used in Syria, repeatedly
- US halts 'non-lethal assistance' into northern Syria after Islamic Front seizes bases
- Desperate Syrian rebels turn homes into weapons factories
.