One-month-old conjoined twins who were evacuated from a besieged rebel-held suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus have died, a medical charity says.
Moaz and Nawras weighed less than 12lb (5.4kg) when they were born by caesarean section on 23 July at the Zahra hospital in Douma, a town in the eastern Ghouta region outside Damascus.
Nawras and Moaz were joined at the chest, with hearts in the same sac. The government allowed them to be moved to a children’s hospital on 12 August after doctors launched an appeal.
The boys had been waiting for documents so they could travel abroad for vital surgery when they passed away, the Syrian American Medical Society said.
“The whole world couldn’t have the permission to evacuate them,” wrote the charity’s Turkey advocacy manager, Mohamad Katoub, on Twitter.
He was later quoted by the Syrian pro-opposition website Enab Baladi as blaming “interference by the ministry of foreign affairs and its stalling of issuing a travel permit to any country to allow them to receive treatment”.
Douma has been completely besieged by government forces for two years and the undersupplied hospital was unable to provide the twins with the care they required, according to SAMS.