As aid agencies prepare to deliver food to Madaya, on the outskirts of Damascus, and two other besieged towns in Idlib province, an estimated 400,000 people are living under siege in 15 areas across Syria, according to the UN.
A deal struck on Saturday permits the delivery of food to Madaya, currently surrounded by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and the villages of Foah and Kefraya in Idlib, both of which are hemmed in by rebel fighters.
Due to a siege imposed by the Syrian government and the lebanese Hezbollah group, an estimated 42,000 people in Madaya have little to no access to food, resulting in the deaths of at least 23 people by starvation so far, according to the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
Reports of widespread malnutrition have emerged, some of them suggesting that Madaya residents are resorting to eating grass and insects for survival.
In Kefraya and Foah, about 12,500 people are cut off from access to aid supplies by rebel groups, including al-Nusra Front.
On December 26, Syrian government forces set up a checkpoint and sealed off the final road to Moadamiyah, a rebel-controlled town on the outskirts of Damascus, demanding that opposition groups lay down their arms and surrender.
The Moadamiyah Media Office, run by pro-opposition activists, estimates that 45,000 civilians are stuck in the area for more than two weeks.
The organisation said on Saturday that a siege that started in April 2013 and lasted a year, resulted in the deaths of 16 local residents due to a lack of food and medicine.
It said the current one has killed one local resident so far this year, with an eight-month-old boy dying from malnutrition on January 10.
Dani Qabbani, a Moadamiyah-based media activist, said that the child died because of “the crippling siege being imposed by Assad’s militias”. “They couldn’t help him here in the only field hospital in the city,” he told Al Jazeera. “Assad’s checkpoints prevented his family from hospitalising him in Damascus.
“If the situation continues for another week, we are expecting a disaster for the 45,000 civilians (in Moadamiyah).” Explaining that the local population is worn down and scared, Qabbani added that “they don’t want to go through what they did in 2013 again”.