Syrians Queue to Buy Bread and Fuel: Why Aren’t Russia and Iran Supporting Us?https://english.aawsat.com/home/article/2577571/syrians-queue-buy-bread-and-fuel-why-aren%E2%80%99t-russia-and-iran-supporting-us
Syrians Queue to Buy Bread and Fuel: Why Aren’t Russia and Iran Supporting Us?
Heating fuel, petrol and cooking gas have been in short supply in government-held areas of Syria for years, and motorists have grown used to long queues to fill up. (AFP)
Syrians Queue to Buy Bread and Fuel: Why Aren’t Russia and Iran Supporting Us?
Heating fuel, petrol and cooking gas have been in short supply in government-held areas of Syria for years, and motorists have grown used to long queues to fill up. (AFP)
As the fuel, diesel and bread crisis continues to deepen, the Syrian government announced additional reductions of gasoline and diesel subsidies for the second time this month. Observers see that Damascus “is bitterly disappointed and quietly suffering because of its allies’ failure to intervene to rescue it from its latest crisis.” Syrians are questioning Russia and Iran as massive queues overwhelm government-subsidized bakeries amid the acute grain shortage.
On Monday, the Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection issued a sudden decree raising the price of a liter of industrial and commercial gas to 650 Syrian pounds after being priced at 296 pounds. It also raised the price of a liter of Octane 95 gasoline to 1,050 pounds, after having had already raised the price from 450 to 850 pounds earlier this month.
With its decision, the ministry confirmed that the price of gas for heating, 180 pounds per liter, has not been changed. The same applies to other sectors, like transportation, agriculture and the public sector. It also maintained the price (135 Pounds per liter) at which gas is sold to bakeries that distribute bread rations.
The ministry justified its decision to raise the price at which gas is sold to manufacturers and businesses with the high cost of supplying petroleum derivatives in light of the “unjust blockade” imposed by the American administration on the Syrian people, adding that the measure will help to curb smuggling.
Car owners told Asharq Al-Awsat that they still spend hours, sometimes a whole day, waiting to buy 30 liters of gas at the subsidized price of 250 pounds, while others resort to the black market and buy it at astronomical prices.
Meanwhile, the government has kept quiet about the reasons for the long queues at bakeries and puts the gasoline shortage down to maintenance work, the completion of which has been announced several times this year, at the Baniyas refinery.
But economists have been asking: what are our allies, Russia and Iran, doing about what is going in Syria? Why haven’t they intervened? Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, one economist asked: “Is a major power like Russia incapable of supplying an oil tanker or a ship loaded with grain?”
He added: “The government is silent! Is it a silence about being let down by our allies?”
In a joint press conference on September 7, during Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to Damascus, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said: “The future of relations with Russia is promising, and it has positive indications for the county’s economic and political future.”
“We are optimistic that the general economic situation will improve in the coming months,” he said.
However, a month and a half later, and after a government delegation recently visited Moscow, the economic situation has yet to improve in areas under the regime’s control; indeed, it has become worse.
The crisis has been intensifying over the past month, and living conditions have become hellishly dire. Amid the grain shortage, dozens of bakeries in Damascus and its periphery shut their doors, while the large state-run bakeries in the capital have been unable to supply the quota that it had promised.
After the expected waiting time at these bakeries exceeded five hours, the price of a bundle of bread (seven loaves) surged in the black market, first going from 200 pounds to 500 before reaching 1,000 pounds on Tuesday. Subsidized bread is sold for 50 pounds. As for gas for heating, local sources claim only 10 percent of families on the ration lists have received their share.
Palestinians’ Dangerous Ordeal to Reach Israeli-Approved Aid in Gazahttps://english.aawsat.com/features/5152750-palestinians%E2%80%99-dangerous-ordeal-reach-israeli-approved-aid%C2%A0-gaza
Palestinians collect what remains of relief supplies from the distribution center of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 5, 2025. (Reuters)
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Palestinians’ Dangerous Ordeal to Reach Israeli-Approved Aid in Gaza
Palestinians collect what remains of relief supplies from the distribution center of the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, June 5, 2025. (Reuters)
When university professor Nizam Salama made his way to a southern Gaza aid point last week, he came under fire twice, was crushed in a desperate crowd of hungry people and finally left empty handed.
Shooting first started shortly after he left his family's tent at 3 a.m. on June 3 to join crowds on the coast road heading towards the aid site in the city of Rafah run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a new US-based organization working with private military contractors to deliver aid in Gaza.
The second time Salama came under fire was at Alam Roundabout close to the aid delivery site, where he saw six dead bodies.
Twenty-seven people were killed that day by Israeli fire on aid seekers, Palestinian health authorities said. Israel said its forces had shot at a group of people they viewed as a threat and the military is investigating the incident.
At the aid delivery site, known as SDS 1, queues snaked through narrow cage-like fences before gates were opened to an area surrounded by sand barriers where packages of supplies were left on tables and in boxes on the ground, according to undated CCTV video distributed by GHF, reviewed by Reuters.
Salama said the rush of thousands of people once the gates opened was a "death trap."
"Survival is for the stronger: people who are fitter and can make it earlier and can push harder to win the package," he said. "I felt my ribs going into each other. My chest was going into itself. My breath...I couldn't breathe. People were shouting; they couldn't breathe at all."
A Palestinian man, next to a child, displays the aid supplies he received from the US-supported Gaza Relief Organization, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, June 5, 2025. (Reuters)
Reuters could not independently verify all the details of Salama's account. It matched the testimonies of two other aid seekers interviewed by Reuters, who spoke of crawling and ducking as bullets rattled overhead on their way to or from the aid distribution sites.
All three witnesses said they saw dead bodies on their journeys to and from the Rafah sites.
A statement from a nearby Red Cross field hospital confirmed the number of dead from the attack near the aid site on June 3.
Asked about the high number of deaths since it began operations on May 26, GHF said there had been no casualties at or in the close vicinity of its site.
The Israeli military didn't respond to detailed requests for comment. Israeli military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin told reporters on Sunday that Hamas was "doing its best" to provoke troops, who "shoot to stop the threat" in what he called a war zone in the vicinity of the aid sites. He said military investigations were underway "to see where we were wrong."
Salama, 52, had heard enough about the new system to know it would be difficult to get aid, he said, but his five children - including two adults, two teenagers and a nine-year-old - needed food. They have been eating only lentils or pasta for months, he said, often only a single meal a day.
"I was completely against going to the aid site of the American company (GHF) because I knew and I had heard how humiliating it is to do so, but I had no choice because of the bad need to feed my family," said the professor of education administration.
In total, 127 Palestinians have been killed trying to get aid from GHF sites in almost daily shootings since distribution under the new system began two weeks ago, Gaza's health authority said on Monday.
The system appears to violate core principles of humanitarian aid, said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, a major humanitarian organization. He compared it to the Hunger Games, the dystopian novels that set people to run and fight to the death.
"A few will be rewarded and the many will only risk their lives for nothing," Egeland said.
"International humanitarian law has prescribed that aid in war zones should be provided by neutral intermediaries that can make sure that the most vulnerable will get the relief according to needs alone and not as part of a political or military strategy," he said.
GHF did not directly respond to a question about its neutrality, replying that it had securely delivered enough aid for more than 11 million meals in two weeks. Gaza's population is around 2.1 million people.
A Palestinian man shows blood stains on his palm after he carried casualties among people seeking aid supplies from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. (Reuters)
FAMINE RISK
Israel allowed limited UN-led aid operations to resume on May 19 after an 11-week blockade in the enclave, where experts a week earlier warned a famine looms.
The UN has described the aid allowed into Gaza as "drop in the ocean."
Separate to the UN operation, Israel allowed GHF to open four sites in Gaza, bypassing traditional aid groups. The GHF sites are overseen by a US logistics company run by a former CIA official and part-owned by a Chicago-based private equity firm, with security provided by US military veterans working for a private contractor, two sources have told Reuters.
An Israeli defense official involved in humanitarian matters told Reuters GHF's distribution centers were sufficient for around 1.2 million people. Israel and the United States have urged the UN to work with GHF, which has seen a high churn of top personnel, although both countries deny funding it.
Reuters has not been able to establish who provides the funding for the organization but reported last week that Washington was considering an Israeli request to put in $500 million.
GHF coordinates with the Israeli army for access, the foundation said in reply to Reuters questions, adding that it was looking to open more distribution points. It has paused then resumed deliveries several times after the shooting incidents, including on Monday.
Last week, it urged the Israeli army to improve civilian safety beyond the perimeter of its operations. GHF said the UN was failing to deliver aid, pointing to a spate of recent lootings.
Israel says the UN's aid deliveries have previously been hijacked by Hamas to feed their own fighters. Hamas has denied stealing aid and the UN denies its aid operations help Hamas.
The UN, which has handled previous aid deliveries into Gaza, says it has over 400 distribution points for aid in the territory. On Monday it described an increasingly anarchic situation of looting and has called on Israel to allow more of its trucks to move safely.
SHOOTING STARTS
Salama and four neighbors set out from Mawasi, in the Khan Younis area of the southern Gaza Strip, at 3 a.m. on Tuesday for the aid site, taking two hours to reach Rafah, which is several miles away near the Egyptian border.
Shooting started early in their journey. Some fire was coming from the sea, he said, consistent with other accounts of the incidents. Israel's military controls the sea around Gaza.
His small group decided to press on. In the dark, the way was uneven and he repeatedly fell, he said.
"I saw people carrying wounded persons and heading back with them towards Khan Younis," he said.
By the time they reached Alam Roundabout in Rafah, about a kilometer from the site, there was a vast crowd. There was more shooting and he saw bullets hitting nearby.
"You must duck and stay on the ground," he said, describing casualties with wounds to the head, chest and legs.
He saw bodies nearby, including a woman, along with "many" injured people, he said.
Another aid seeker interviewed by Reuters, who also walked to Rafah on June 3 in the early morning, described repeated gunfire during the journey.
At one point, he and everyone around him crawled for a stretch of several hundred meters, fearing being shot. He saw a body with a wound to the head about 100 meters from the aid site, he said.
Palestinians gather to collect aid supplies from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. (Reuters)
The Red Cross Field Hospital in Rafah received a mass casualty influx of 184 patients on June 3, the majority of them injured by gunshots, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement, calling it the highest number of weapon-wounded patients the hospital had ever received in a single incident. There were 27 fatalities.
"All responsive patients said they were trying to reach an assistance distribution site," the statement said.
When Salama finally arrived at the aid point on June 3, there was nothing left.
"Everyone was standing pulling cardboard boxes from the floor that were empty," he said. "Unfortunately, I found nothing: a very, very, very big zero."
Although the aid was gone, more people were arriving.
"The flood of people pushes you to the front while I was trying to go back," he said.
As he was pushed further towards where GHF guards were located, he saw them using pepper spray on the crowd, he said.
GHF said it was not aware of the pepper spray incident, but said its workers used non-lethal measures to protect civilians.
"I started shouting at the top of my lungs, brothers I don't want anything, I just want to leave, I just want to leave the place," Salama said.
"I left empty-handed... I went back home depressed, sad and angry and hungry too," he said.