“The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said that it is reaching close to 3.3 million people in Syria — a record for its operations — but many are still without food in areas cut off by fighting, particularly in Damascus and the capital’s besieged suburbs,” the U.N. News Centre reports (11/1). Those areas, “where fighting has intensified, have not been reached for many months and the nutritional state of those trapped is believed to have deteriorated significantly, the [WFP] said,” Reuters writes (Nebehay, 11/1). “Large swathes of territory near Aleppo and Hassekeh remain inaccessible to aid agencies, and WFP spokeswoman Elizabeth Byrs says other areas are becoming inaccessible due to the intensification of the conflict,” VOA News adds (Schlein, 11/1).

The WFP said “it feared a rise in malnutrition among children trapped in besieged communities in Syria where fighting has halted supply convoys,” Agence France-Presse/GlobalPost notes (11/1). “Millions are going hungry to varying degrees, and there is growing evidence that acute malnutrition is contributing to relatively small but increasing numbers of deaths, especially among small children, the wounded and the sick, aid workers and nutrition experts say,” according to the New York Times (Barnard, 11/2). “More children are being admitted to hospitals in Damascus and other parts of the country for treatment of malnutrition, a condition that leaves them weakened and more susceptible to other diseases, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said,” Reuters adds (11/1).