BEIRUT
A group of Palestinian activists on Monday called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to rescue struggling residents of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in eastern Damascus by urging the Syrian regime to lift its ongoing siege on the camp and allow the entry of desperately-needed food and medical supplies.
"Camp residents are being starved along with the people of Syria," activist Abu Jehad Zaidan said, reading out from a statement.
Yarmouk was once home to Syria's largest population of Palestinian refugees with 144,000 registered refugees, according to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA).
The camp has been under siege by Syrian troops for nearly seven months.
Thousands of its residents have since fled.
The activists, who staged a protest outside the ICRC offices in the capital Beirut, held photos of Palestinian children who had starved to death in the camp as a result of the ongoing siege.
More than 50 camp residents – including a number of children – have starved to death, while others face the same fate in the total absence of humanitarian aid, according to activists.
More than 70 men, women and children had recently starved to death in Yarmouk, Zaidan said, warning that the number of hunger-induced deaths in the camp continued to rise.
"Some people have resorted to eating grass and cats because there's no other food," he lamented.
"There will be more suffering and death with each passing hour if the camp doesn't soon receive food and medical supplies."
The activist called on international organizations to pressure the Syrian regime to lift the siege and allow the entry of food and medicine into the camp under ICRC supervision.
"The conditions of those in the camp are deplorable," said Abu Mohamed, a camp resident who managed to flee before the Syrian army besieged the camp.
He added that he was still in daily contact with those inside the camp, who, he said, continued to complain of an acute lack of food.
"Death is on the rise inside the camp," Abu Mohamed said.
"Ten people died yesterday from hunger and four more died today."
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