After issuing religious edicts permitting people to eat dogs and cats, Syrian clerics from southern Damascus have reiterated their plea for humanitarian help in a video aired on Al Arabiya News Channel on Monday. 
 
 “How does the world sleep with full stomachs while there are hungry people, and not far from the main city [Damascus], just few meters way,” a leading imam said in a statement, initially broadcasted by the Southern Damascus Media Office. 
 
 The imam, accompanied by other religious scholars, said his statement that also represented the views of clerics and Shariah (Islamic law) students from southern Damascus, was for people to know about the dire humanitarian situation in their area. 
 
 He said while Muslim pilgrims don their white robes to perform one of Islam’s major tenants in Makkah, the hajj pilgrimage, “there are people who died from hunger, and were dressed with white coffins.” 
 
 “Haven’t you heard the fatwas (religious edicts) that have filled our streets and mosques by permitting people to eat cats, dogs and other animals that have already been killed by the bomb attacks? 
 
 “Are you waiting for us to eat the flesh of our martyrs and our dead after fearing our lives? … You have forgot that you have brothers and sisters in southern Damascus who are hungry.” 
 
 President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have tightened their siege on Southern Damascus throughout the conflict, along with other parts of the capital. 
 
 On Friday, fighters loyal to Assad’s regime captured two southern suburbs of Damascus, killing at least 70 people, opposition activists said. 
 
 The two suburbs are near Sayida Zainab, a district where a Shiite shrine is located and which the Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite group, Hezbollah and Iraqi fighters have used as a base to deploy in southern Damascus. 
 
 The fatwas permitting eating dogs’ and cats’ meat has also been issued by an imam in the Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, according to Asharq al-Awsat. 
 
 The Yarmouk camp has been under siege for three months, and humanitarian conditions have deteriorated drastically. The Syrian regime is preventing the entry of food and relief items. 
 
 Last year, a similar fatwa was also issued in the city of Homs allowing the consumption of cats, dogs and donkeys. 
 
 Last Update: Monday, 14 October 2013 KSA 22:34 - GMT 19:34 ||||| Image caption Thousands of people were evacuated from the suburb of Muadhamiya on Sunday 
 
 A group of Syrian clerics have issued a ruling - or fatwa - allowing people living in besieged suburbs of Damascus to eat meat that is normally forbidden. 
 
 In a video, the Muslim clerics said people could eat cats, dogs and donkeys to stave off hunger. 
 
 The fatwa comes amid reports of starvation in the besieged, rebel-held Damascus suburb of Muadhamiya. 
 
 Aid agencies have urged the government to allow humanitarian supplies to the area, where many residents are trapped. 
 
 Hundreds of civilians, some carried on stretchers, were able to flee Muadhamiya at the weekend following a temporary ceasefire. 
 
 'Absurd situation' 
 
 In a message to coincide with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha - normally a time for celebration and feasting - the religious leaders authorised those left in the Ghouta agricultural belt around Damascus to eat animals usually considered unfit for human consumption in Islam. 
 
 The clerics said it was a cry for help to the whole world, adding that if the situation continued to deteriorate, the living would have to eat the dead. 
 
 It is not the first such fatwa issued in the Syrian conflict. 
 
 Similar religious edicts were announced in Homs and Aleppo when the fighting in those cities was at its fiercest. 
 
 Aid agencies have said that providing food and aid to areas under attack should be as much a priority as the programme to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. 
 
 The general director of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), Christopher Stokes, has described it as an "absurd" situation when chemical weapons inspectors are able to drive freely through areas in desperate need while aid convoys are blocked. 
 
 Hundreds of people were killed on 21 August when rockets filled with the nerve agent were fired at the suburbs of Zamalka, Ein Tarma and Muadhamiya. The inspectors did not establish who was responsible, but the government and rebels have blamed each other. ||||| An imam in a rebel-held district of Damascus has issued a fatwa allowing residents to eat cats and dogs, in a desperate bid to ward off starvation after months under siege by the Assad regime. 
 
 Salah al-Khatib, the cleric who issued the edict, said he had been left with no choice but to lift the usual restrictions under Islamic law, after government forces and pro-regime militias choked off food and medical supplies to three rebel-held suburbs of Damascus and to a camp housing Palestinian refugees. 
 
 This is "not because it is religiously permitted, but because it is a reflection of the reality we are suffering", Mr Khatib told AFP on Tuesday. 
 
 Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in these areas, some of them living under siege for more than a year. Residents have told The Telegraph that as food has run out, they have been forced in recent weeks to survive on stray dogs, rotting animal carcasses, tree leaves and weeds. 
 
 "I have watched the poorer families eat stray dogs because they have nothing else," said Ehab, a resident of the Yarmouk camp, speaking to The Telegraph via Skype. "There is no food here now." 
 
 Shops in the camps were "completely bare" and the tight siege was preventing any movement in or out of the camp, Ehab said. The only prioper food remaining was small quantities of rice. 
 
 As he spoke, Syrian state television was broadcasting footage of President Bashar al-Assad, dressed in a sharp suit, attending prayers to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha feast in a mosque just a few miles away. Meanwhile Asma al-Assad Syria's first lady, was shown on state television planting olive trees with children. 
 
 Their appearance during the festival of Eid al-Adha, when Muslims would normally visit relatives and friends and celebrate with bountiful food, was in stark contrast with the starving rebel areas, where some residents interviewed by The Telegraph broke down and begged for help. 
 
 "Please, this is an SOS," said one activist who asked not to be named. "Today I have eaten nothing. Yesterday I had a small bowl of rice. We are down to one small meal per day." 
 
 Over the last 10 months Syrian government troops have been steadily reducing the amount of supplies allowed into these areas. 
 
 Mohammed and Alaa, two residents of Yarmouk, told The Telegraph that initially women and elderly men had been allowed out of the camp to shop for supplies. 
 
 "Women were allowed to bring in a small amount of bread, no more than 12 pieces each," said Mohammed. "Then, in February, this stopped and soldiers only allowed in essentials - grain and sugar - in tiny quantities. Now even that has finished." 
 
 Ehab said: "This has been so bad for five months. There is no food. We had five roads out of here but the regime closed them with sniper and tanks." 
 
 The situation is causing chronic malnutrition that residents say has already resulted in the deaths of a number of babies, a claim that cannot be independently verified. 
 
 "Mothers are so malnourished that they cannot produce any milk, and there is almost no baby formula left," said Omar speaking from the southern suburb of Darayya. 
 
 Abu Mohammed, a doctor in a field clinic in the Marj area, east of the capital, said: "On any given day in the emergency room, some four out of 10 patients I see are malnourished children. Many children have very low blood pressure, fatigue, dizziness, and a reduced (disease-fighting) white blood cell count." 
 
 For some, relief came earlier this week when the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Red Crescent evacuated an estimated 3,500 people from Moadimayet al-Sham, with the agreement of the authorities. But only children, women and old men were able to leave, with the wounded left behind and aid workers prevented from entering to assist them. 
 
 "There are many more, including children, who remain in the town," said Magne Barth, head of the ICRC delegation in Syria. 
 
 Omar said that "more than 10,000 people" were still trapped in Darayya alone. "Today the regime started blocking people from coming out again."
– The days of dogs and cats living in Damascus or its hard-hit suburbs might be numbered, at least according to local clerics. With reports surfacing of regime loyalists using starvation tactics against rebel-held areas like Muadhamiya, Syrian clerics have issued a fatwa telling the faithful that is OK to eat normally forbidden meats like dogs, cats, and donkeys, the BBC reports. "It is a reflection of the reality we are suffering," one cleric said, according to the Telegraph. One leading imam followed that up with a video on Al Arabiya today begging for international humanitarian intervention. "How does the world sleep with full stomachs while there are hungry people, and not far from the main city?" he asked. "Are you waiting for us to eat the flesh of our martyrs and our dead?"