Food rations have run out in besieged Aleppo

(Image credit: GEORGES OURFALIAN/AFP/Getty Images)

Aid workers in the besieged eastern portion of Aleppo, Syria, handed out their final food rations Thursday, the United Nations says. Now, tens of thousands of people will go hungry unless a new aid arrangement can be made.

"I do believe we will be able to avert mass hunger this winter," U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said in Geneva. "I don't think anybody wants a quarter of a million people to be starving in east Aleppo."

Though there is some food available for purchase in the once-thriving city, prices have skyrocketed as rebel occupation and regime-loyal bombardments last for months on end. Some families have been without food aid for several weeks already, and medical care is extremely limited as well. Russia has promised to continue scheduling pauses in its airstrikes so that humanitarian efforts have time to proceed.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.