Syria Feature: Homs --- Dying Without Food, Medicine, or Supplies (Damon and Korouny and Lee)

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Last week "Sammy", an activist in Homs, concluded an interview with EA's James Miller, "I do not know what the world is waiting for. Is it a terrorist group, or a revolution?....At least they need to send relief, to help the humanitarian situation. We need humanitarian aid."

This morning we post two videos and an article about the situation inside Syria's besieged city. At the top of the entry, CNN's Arwa Damon reports from Baba Amr in Homs on the lack of food and other essentials and the efforts to get supplies to the population.

Below, Mariam Korouny writes for Reuters about the crisis, and Al Jazeera English posts a video report by Laurence Lee about the deaths and shortages.

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Homs Opposition Die Without Food, Medicine And Supplies
Miriam Korouny

Struggling to survive after two weeks of withering bombardment by Syrian forces, people in the Baba Amro district of Homs are packed four or five families to a house, relying on collected rain water and watching their wounded friends and relatives die for lack of medicines, residents say.

Some say starvation is a real threat and accuse the world of abandoning them to army shelling which they say has killed dozens of people and wounded 2,000 in the rebel stronghold of an 11-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

With no chance to flee, many families have abandoned their houses on the outskirts and retreated further into the heart of the battered neighbourhood in the central western city of Homs, cramming dozens of people into small houses and apartments.

Those who survive the shelling face shortages of food and water which they say have been deliberately aggravated by government snipers shooting at water tanks. They are terrified to leave their homes and shelters.

"We are collecting rain water in jars and casseroles," said Abu Bakr, a resident of Baba Amro sheltering with 25 people in a two-room house.

"We take turns in sleeping -- some during the day and others during the night because we do not have enough space," he said.

Women who recently gave birth are unable to feed their babies because their breast milk has dried up from shock, he said. "Some women have volunteered to breast feed those babies but until when? Their lives are in danger."

The shelling destroyed many houses in the poor neighbourhood of 80,000 people and the few field hospitals erected months ago are in ruins, activists say. At least two doctors and two nurses were killed in the shelling, leaving Baba Amro with just two or three doctors, they say.

Read full article....