Sheep are slaughtered on the first day of Eid al-Adha in Raqqa, eastern Syria.

Sheep are slaughtered on the first day of Eid al-Adha in Raqqa, eastern Syria. Photo: Reuters

A Muslim cleric in a rebel-held district of Damascus has issued a fatwa, or ruling, allowing people to eat cats and dogs to ward off starvation after months of siege by the Assad regime.

Salah al-Khatib, the imam who issued the ruling, said he had no choice but to lift the usual Islamic dietary restrictions, after government forces and pro-regime militias choked off food and medical supplies to three rebel-held suburbs of Damascus and a camp housing Palestinian refugees. This is ''not because it is religiously permitted, but because it is a reflection of the reality we are suffering'', Mr Khatib said on Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in these areas, some of them living under siege for more than a year.

Residents say that as food has run out, they have been forced in recent weeks to survive on stray dogs, rotting animal carcasses, tree leaves and weeds.

''I have watched the poorer families eat stray dogs because they have nothing else,'' said Ehab, who lives in the Yarmouk refugee camp. ''There is no food here now.''

Shops in the camps were bare and the siege was preventing any movement in or out of the camp, Ehab said. The only proper food remaining was small quantities of rice.

As he spoke, state television broadcast footage of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad attending prayers to mark the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha in a mosque just a few kilometres away.

Mohammed and Alaa, two residents of Yarmouk, said that initially women and elderly men had been allowed out of the camp to shop for supplies.

''Then, in February, this stopped and soldiers only allowed in essentials - grain and sugar - in tiny quantities. Now even that has finished,'' Mohammed said.

Telegraph, Londo