'On the brink of disaster': children starve in siege of Syria's former breadbasket

With a political breakthrough unlikely at upcoming talks, people in eastern Ghouta face shortages of food, fuel and medicine

The sight of a woman weeping as she drags her malnourished children into a clinic is not rare in eastern Ghouta, which is under siege by forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad.

But when one mother told Abdel Hamid, a doctor, that she had fed her four starving children newspaper cutouts softened with water to stop them from screaming into the night, even he was stunned.