Syria's bucket children desperate for aid

Most schools in Eastern Ghouta have been converted into shelters for the internally displaced. Most children have been out of school for almost three years now.

A Damascus neighbourhood, under siege for more than two years, is suffering from a drastic food shortage.

Firas Suqi Last updated: 10 Nov 2014

As the siege of Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, enters its third year, swarms of children armed with buckets can be intermittently seen scavenging the streets and bombed-out buildings in between rounds of fighting.

They roam around on empty stomachs, hoping to find scraps of food and clean water. Some of them walk up to 15km a day for a single meal, feasting on anything from vegetable broth to stale bread made from animal feed.

Limited supplies of food have reached the markets since the siege of Eastern Ghouta began in October 2012, and this does not include fresh milk and meat. The increasingly scarce supply of staples such as bread and rice has created a black market for the coveted goods, with some shops raising their prices by 600 percent.

Eastern Ghouta was the site of a chemical attack in August 2013, during which Syrian activists say government forces killed hundreds of people. It is also one of the last remaining swaths of territory held by the Free Syrian Army in the Damascus area.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/11/syria-bucket-children-desperate-aid-2014119114455557565.html