Two-year-old Emir al-Bash’s blood still showed on his mother’s hand as she sat in a medical centre in Syria’s besieged eastern Ghouta where his body was taken after he died from a shell blast.

His family had left their home in the village of Kafr Batna earlier this week for a market in a nearby village, seeking food for their malnourished children, but a mortar shell landed close to them, instantly killing the boy.

“My child died hungry. We wanted to feed him. He was crying from hunger when we left the house,” said the mother, Heba Amouri.

Emir is the second child she has lost in a war that began six years ago. Eastern Ghouta is the last big stronghold of rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad near the capital Damascus and has been besieged for years.

The United Nations estimates it is home to 400,000 civilians and says food and medical supplies have run low. The army and its allies - Russia and Iran-backed militias - bombard it daily. Rebels there shell government-held Damascus.