Syrians Are Starting To Turn On Each Other As People Lose Their Minds From Extreme Hunger

Priest Warns Starving Syrians Could turn On Each Other As People Lose Their Minds From Extreme Hunger -- National Post/The Telegraph

A Dutch priest trapped in the siege of the Syrian city of Homs has told how residents cut off for more than a year are developing mental health problems that are leading to the breakdown of social order.

Father Frans Van der Lugt, a 75-year-old Roman Catholic and the local leader in the besieged Old City in Homs, told of his community’s battle for survival during two years of living in a district brutalized by war and without food.

“Our city has become a lawless jungle,” said Fr Van der Lugt. “We are trying our best to behave in a fraternal way so we don’t turn on each other for the hunger.”

Fr Van der Lugt spoke to The Daily Telegraph by Skype after posting a video online in which he appealed to the outside world for help from a rebel-held district of Homs that has been sealed off by Syrian government troops.

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My Comment: This news story reminds me of what my father told me on what he experienced during the Ukraine famine of 1932-33. Family suicides (the family who lived next door to my father committed suicide), the scramble for any food (families begged my grandmother for her potato peels), and in the end .... death. The Syrians who are under siege are enduring the same fate .... and they are going to be defeated.