The impact of explosive violence on child nutrition
Format
By Verity Hubbard
Between 2014 and 2017, the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor found itself a place under siege. For three long years, Deir ez-Zor was shelled, starved and systematically destroyed. Food was already fast becoming scarce, but when ISIS fired rockets at Deir ez-Zor s airport, they severed the air bridge supplying the city with food. Hunger followed. Civilians later reported that they were forced to eat the edible leaves found in the surrounding area .
The Deir ez-Zor siege starkly demonstrates the interrelationship between conflict and hunger in the modern age, and how food is today still used as a weapon of war.