Nearly a million Syrians are living under siege - almost double that from six months ago - amid the ongoing Syrian civil war, a UN official said Monday.
Stephen O'Brien, UN under-secretary general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told the UN Security Council in New York that 974,000 Syrians were currently living in areas under siege.
Six months ago that number stood at 487,000. Since July, 275,000 more people have come under siege in East Aleppo alone.
"Civilians are being isolated, starved, bombed and denied medical attention and humanitarian assistance in order to force them to submit or flee. It is a deliberate tactic of cruelty to compound a people's suffering for political, military and in some cases economic gain," O'Brien said.
The goal is to destroy and defeat a civilian population that cannot defend itself, he said. Responsible is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, "the one party, above all, who should be defending and protecting" Syria's citizens, he asserted.
Among the new areas under siege were Joubar near Damascus, al-Hajar al-Aswad, Khan al-Shih, and multiple locales in the enclave of eastern Ghutah east of Damascus.
