No milk, no diapers: US aid cuts hit Syrian refugees

Amal Al-Merhi’s twin IO-month-old daughters often go without milk or diapers.

- 

She feeds them a mix of cornstarch and water, because milk is too expensive. Instead of diapers, Merhi ties plastic bags around her babies’ waists.

The effects of their poverty is clear, she said.

"If you see one of the twins, you would not believe she is IO-months-old," Merhi said in a phone interview. "She is so small and soft."

The 20-year-old Syrian mother lives in a tent with her family of five in an informal camp in Bar Elias in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.

She fled Syria’s civil war in 2013 and has been relying on cash assistance from the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR to get by.

But that has ended.