A Syrian girl waits with her family hoping to leave the town of Madaya where thousands have been dying of starvation. Trucks from international relief organizations entered Madaya January 11, 2016 carrying food and medical supplies.
"Did you bring food? Because we are so hungry and we were waiting for you."
Those words never resonated more heavily with Pawel Krzysiek than on Monday when he came to the besieged Syrian town of Madaya with a convoy of long-awaited food and medicine.
Krzysiek works for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Syria, which is overseeing distribution of supplies. While in Madaya, he met a little girl who approached him as he got out of the truck.
"You listen to her and you look into her eyes and … she's this cute little girl who doesn't have anything to do with what is going on in Syria and this is the tragedy with the conflict in this country," he says. "Too many people are trapped or caught up by the endless fighting and very little can be done to help them."
This wasn't Krzysiek's first trip to Madaya. He says he had travelled to the mountain village in October 2015, which was the last joint ICRC/United Nations/Syrian Arab Red Crescent humanitarian convoy to enter, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. But this recent trip was particularly poignant for Krzysiek.
"It was heart-breaking to see because … looking at these people's faces, you could see that they did not have enough food for quite a while. Many people asked us, 'do you have a piece of bread? Or a cookie? Because we haven't had that for a long time and we are quite hungry.'"
"It's not until you start talking with the people that you realize how desperate the situation is," says Krzysiek.
Madaya is about 15 miles northwest of the capital, Damascus. It and two other towns have been cut off for months by fighting between forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and rebel fighters. But a deal was struck with the Syrian government to allow the relief organizations to deliver food and medical supplies to the three besieged communities.
UN humanitarian head Stephen O'Brien reported Monday that about 400 people in a Madaya hospital were in grave danger and needed to be evacuated immediately.