Booby traps left behind by ISIS in the Syrian city of Raqqa have killed or wounded an average of 50 people per week.
By: AP and World Israel News Staff
A United Nations (UN) humanitarian official, Jan Egeland, says booby traps and other explosives left behind by the Islamic State (ISIS) terror group in the Syrian city of Raqqa have killed or wounded an average of 50 people per week since US-backed fighters expelled the Islamist terror group in October.
Egeland says civilians are returning to their homes too quickly, adding that “there are explosives all over civilian areas” in Raqqa.
The group declared the city on the banks of the Euphrates River, which it seized from other Syrian rebels in early 2014, to be the capital of its self-styled “caliphate,” transforming the once vibrant metropolis into the epicenter of its brutal rule where opponents were beheaded and terror plots were planned.
Dozens of terrorists who refused to surrender had made their last stand in the city’s stadium, which had become notorious as a prison and dungeons for the group.
Egeland spoke Thursday to reporters in Geneva after a regular meeting of world and regional powers in a UN humanitarian “task force” for Syria.
Assad’s brutal siege
He also said that aid deliveries to “besieged areas” in Syria have fallen to their lowest level since 2015 — before the task force was created — with these areas having no access to them at all for the last two months.
He also noted that no medical evacuations from Eastern Ghouta, a large area east of Damascus besieged by Assad’s government forces, have occurred since late December. Egeland said in December that 12 have died waiting for medical evacuation from Eastern Ghouta.
Some 400,000 people are trapped without enough food, fuel or medicine for the winter.
According to the UN, roughly one in eight children are malnourished in Eastern Ghouta — a shocking jump from one in 50 in May.