A QUARTER OF A MILLION SYRIAN CHILDREN LIVING UNDER SIEGE:

A report this week by the charity, Save The Children, estimates that 250,000 children are struggling to get access to electricity along with the food and medicine they need to survive. Sieges staged by warring groups, where snipers try to shoot anyone leaving an area, has meant young people are losing their lives "just a few kilometers from warehouses piled high with aid". Syrian vets have begun to treat sick humans because humanitarian groups cannot gain access to some areas. Officials on the ground described children eating animal feed, grass, and boiled leaves as they took shelter from airstrikes. The endemic levels of malnutrition have left children "wandering around in a daze from hunger."

One of the 125 adults and children interviewed by the charity compared their plight to living in an "open-air prison" - with women dying in childbirth and babies dying at checkpoints. The report adds: "They and their families are cut off from the outside world, surrounded by warring groups that illegally use siege against civilians as a weapon of war - preventing food, medicine, fuel and other vital supplies from entering and stopping people from fleeing." Save The Children sources are calling for rival factions to lift their sieges immediately so food and medicine can reach impoverished areas, and for civilians to be granted freedom of movement without fear of gunfire. (Arutz-7/Sky) Please pray according to scripture for the tragic war-torn nation of Syria - and that its victims young and old who are suffering will be provided with staples, protection, rescue and relief. "He makes wars cease to the end of the earth.” Ps 46:9