US authorities condemned the prolonged siege of the Damascus suburbs by government forces and called on the Syrian authorities to open access to these areas for humanitarian aid. The corresponding statement by US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki was published on October 18 on the department’s website.

Psaki called “unprecedented” reports that children are dying of hunger as a result of the siege in areas located just a few kilometers from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s palace in Damascus. The fact that a limited number of residents were allowed to leave blocked areas does not excuse the authorities' actions that left thousands of civilians remaining under siege "in desperate need of food, water and medicine," the State Department said in a statement.

The American foreign policy department also demanded that the people responsible for such “atrocities in the suburbs of Damascus and throughout Syria” be identified and brought to justice. At the moment, as a result of the siege, according to the US, residents of the city of Moadimiyah are especially suffering, who have been left without basic necessities for almost a year.

According to BBC News, at least three suburbs of Damascus - Yarmouk, Eastern Ghouta and Mudamiya - remain under blockade by government troops for several months. A few days earlier, the Muslim clergy had issued a decree allowing local residents to eat meat from animals considered “unclean”—cats, dogs and donkeys—to save themselves from starvation. Similar religious decrees were previously issued in the cities of Homs and Hama during periods of fierce fighting.

In the summer of 2013, amid a sharp rise in food prices, the Syrian authorities introduced criminal liability for food speculation.

According to the UN, over two and a half years of civil war in Syria, more than 110 thousand people have died, and about two million people have become refugees.

US opposes siege of famine-stricken Damascus suburbs