Analysis

After three years reporting for the ABC in the Middle East, correspondent Sophie McNeill is coming home to Australia.

As Sophie McNeill prepares to come home to Australia, she looks back on her time reporting in a region where bombing hospitals, denying civilians medical care and besieging and starving children have become commonplace.

WARNING on correspondents report WARNING: This story contains graphic images some people may find distressing

Correspondents Report Overseas reporters give their interpretation and analysis of the week's major events.

I leave the Middle East unable to comprehend what we have allowed our world to become.

For millions of people across this region, the last three years have been full of indescribable fear and suffering.

In these parts, "international law", the "Rules of War" and the "responsibility to protect" feel like antiquated theories discussed in conferences and books, but no longer applied in real life.

The precedents that have been set are staggering. The consequences will haunt us for years.

'It was horrific to watch'

I won't forget the day I met eight-year-old Faris at a hospital in Yemen's capital Sanaa.

Share An 8-year-old boy named Faris, who was badly injured when a missile hit his house.

He'd been asleep in his home when a missile fired by the Saudi-led coalition hit his house, killing his brother and mum. Faris was left with severe burns, stomach injuries and a badly fractured leg.

Every second day, medical staff had to change the bandages on the eight-year-old's wounds and there was no anaesthetic.

Little Faris begged the doctors to stop, he was in so much pain.

"Please doctor, don't! Please doctor, don't! It burns! You're hurting me, you're hurting me. For god's sake, for god's sake!" he screamed.

It was horrific to watch.

Since 2015, the war in Yemen has killed more than 5,000 civilians with thousands more injured.

The UN says coalition airstrikes continue to be the leading cause of civilian casualties.

Share Aftermath of a Saudi led coalition air strike on a wedding that human rights groups said killed 40 civilians.

Saudi Arabia was placed on a UN blacklist for killing and injuring children in Yemen and attacking dozens of schools and hospitals there.

And yet last week, British Prime Minister Theresa May announced the UK had approved the sale of 48 highly advanced fighter jets to Saudi Arabia.

'Food was used as a weapon of war'

Children in Yemen have been dying not just from US and UK made bombs and warplanes. In 2016, I also saw them starve to death.

Share Three-year-old Yemeni child Emtiaz, who is acutely malnourished at Al Sabheen hospital in the capital Sanaa hospital.

In the malnutrition ward of the Al Sabheen hospital, skeletal, emaciated children lay gasping for air. I met the father of 17-month-old Eissa as he sat holding his son's hand.

The family could not afford to feed him properly and the child was severely malnourished.

"We can take care of him the best we can. We don't sleep day and night worrying about him. What else can we do? My wife feels devastated and stays up all night crying," Eissa's father told me.





Eissa died later that night.

Before the 2015 conflict began, Yemen was already the Middle East's poorest country, relying on imports for 90 per cent of its food supplies.

An air and naval blockade by the Saudis resulted in one in three Yemeni children becoming severely malnourished — food used as a weapon of war.

External Link: Sophie McNeill tweet





Last November, when the blockade reached its peak, the NGO Save the Children reported 130 Yemeni kids were dying each day from a lack of food and disease.

I reported how the Royal Australian Navy had conducted a training exercise in August 2017 with the Saudi Navy on the Red Sea, not far from the location where the Saudi-led coalition was enforcing its naval blockade of Yemen.

Share The joint exercise between the RAN and Royal Saudi Navy took place as part of Operation Manitou on August 15.

Besieging and starving children is not just contained to our Saudi allies.

In early January 2016, I remember when I first received photos of emaciated starved babies from doctors working in the Syrian town of Madaya.



The rebel-held town was surrounded by forces loyal to the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — no-one was allowed out and no food was allowed in.

For weeks, doctors sent urgent messages to the UN, begging for aid. Forty kilometres away in Damascus, warehouses full of food sat waiting as the regime blocked its delivery.

Share Sophie McNeill was sent this photo of emaciated children in the beseiged town of Madaya in January 2016.

"After five months of the siege on Madaya by the Syrian regime and Hezbollah, the first victim, a three-month-old baby, died of starvation," Madaya nurse Khaled Naanaa told me.

"We made so many calls to the UN offices. We told them, people are dying of starvation, you must help save them. They didn't give us any real promises," she said.

Pro-government supporters alleged the photos from Madaya were "faked", but on the 11th of January 2016, the UN was finally allowed to enter the town to deliver aid and they verified the state of residents inside.

"It was at times difficult to determine whether what we were seeing was actually fabricated or exaggerated," Yacoub El Hillo, UN humanitarian coordinator for Syria told reporters after visiting the town.

"It is not. It is not. I am sad to say it is not. These are true stories coming out of Madaya."

Physicians for Human Rights says 65 people died from starvation in Madaya during the prolonged siege.

Trapped in 'hell on Earth'

In the rebel held city of Aleppo in 2016, civilians sent me desperate messages.

Terrified as Russian and Syrian regime bombs rained down on their neighbourhoods, killing hundreds of civilians, destroying hospitals that rights groups said were deliberately targeted.

Day after day, horrific images of wounded children and dead civilians emerged from Aleppo.

Today, I'm receiving similar messages from rebel held Eastern Ghouta near Syria's capital Damascus where the UN says 400,00 people are trapped in "hell on Earth".

The photos and videos are horrific. Terrified, bloodied children.

Row after row of dead bodies wrapped in shrouds, whole families wiped out.

Share An injured child in Ghouta March 2018.

The UN says more than 1,100 civilians have been killed in Ghouta in just the last month and more continue to die every day.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres warned of "mass casualties" in Ghouta, reporting that 13 hospitals and clinics that received support from MSF had been damaged or destroyed in just three days.

Figures out this week from The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, said approximately 511,000 people had been killed in the Syrian war since it began seven years ago.

Weeping families emerge from Mosul

I didn't get as many photos out of Mosul. Islamic State Jihadists banned phones there. The full horror of what people endured there became evident once families were able to flee.

They arrived in the thousands, pouring out of the war-torn city, weak from a lack of food and traumatised after months of bombardment on the city.

External Link: Sophie M tweet from Mosul

I watched as weeping families stood in the rain and mud, clutching the few belongings they had left in plastic bags.

They had been used as human shields, starved and shot at as they ran.

Crying women were waiting by the gate of the camp registration office, desperate for news of their missing loved ones.

"He was wearing blue trousers. They tell me he was checked in and is here in the camp somewhere," Um Mohamad, who was searching for her 15-year-old son told me.

"He's my only son," she said, sobbing. "He's sick. He can't walk properly."

I met children forced to learn violent IS curriculum at school, attend public floggings and beheadings and encouraged to spy on their own parents if they saw them breaking the militants' fundamentalist rules.

There was also growing concern regarding the high civilian death toll from coalition airstrikes on Mosul.

Share Sophie met children were forced to learn violent IS curriculum at school.

An investigation by the AP news agency in December 2017 found that between 9,000 and 11,000 civilians died in the battle for Mosul, with about a third of the casualties killed in bombardments by the US-led coalition or Iraqi forces.

I reported on concerns over the Australian Defence Force's tracking of suspected civilian casualties from air strikes.

It was a win for transparency when, after our report, the ADF announced it would start publishing fortnightly reports on the air strikes it carried out in Syria and Iraq, including bombing targets and locations.

And then there was the case of eight-year-old Hashim Abdul Fattah Ali.

Local human rights monitors said on June 11, 2017 he was sitting with his family in their home in the town of Abu Kamal. That day a coalition plane carried out an air strike nearby, resulting in a huge explosion.

Little Hashim lost his life. But there was no blood. He reportedly died of a heart attack.

He was literally scared to death.

Civilians punished by being denied health care

In Gaza, I conducted an investigation into how the denial of health care was used by the Palestinian Authority and Israel to punish civilians in the Hamas militant-run territory.

I met the family of 53-year-old Farha Fayoumi, a widow and mother of nine who had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

With no radiotherapy in Gaza, her doctors referred her to a hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment.

Ms Fayoumi submitted three applications to Israeli security officials to obtain permission to leave Gaza but all were denied. Farha died last April.

Share 53-year-old Farha Fayoumi's daughter mourn their mother's death.

As the Palestinian Authority tried to squeeze the Hamas Islamic militants out of power in the Strip, they slashed funding approvals to treat sick Gazan civilians by 75 per cent.

One-week-old baby Bara'a was one of those who didn't get the urgent health care outside Gaza that he needed. I sat with his parents who were bereft at the loss of their first born.

"My baby did not vote for Hamas. He wasn't alive when Hamas took over. None of us are Hamas supporters. Not the baby, not his mother or father. It's not Bara'a's fault," his father Mohamad told me.

In Jerusalem, I met 55-year-old Emtissa who wept as she held her 13-week-old grandson Elias.

The infant had a tumour and needed urgent treatment outside of Gaza in Jerusalem, but his breastfeeding mother was not granted the permission by Israel to leave with her newborn.

"They got back to us by the evening and told us yes my request was approved and this is because of my age, I'm older," Emtissa said.

"How do you think his mum feels? She was staying up all night to breastfeed him," Elias' grandmother cried holding her grandson.

Share Emtissa was allowed to travel with her grandson to get urgent treatment, but his mother was not.

'I hope that in a small way these stories made a difference'

We can't look back at what is happening now across this region and say we didn't know: that this endless suffering and conflict was not meticulously documented.

In many cases it was live tweeted and sometimes it even went viral.

But this is an age of impunity, hypocrisy reigns supreme. Our leaders get upset about some deaths and not others.

Some sieges are OK, others are war crimes. Some bombings are justifiable, others "must be stopped!"

I hope that in a small way these stories made a difference. Our excuses have run out. We can't say we didn't know.

During her posting, Sophie McNeill won two Walkleys for her radio work from Syria and her reporting from Yemen. She was nominated for two Walkleys for her reporting from Mosul and her Australian Story piece about a doctor from the besieged town of Madaya in Syria. She will soon begin a position at the ABC's Four Corners program.