133,000 flee area near Syria’s capital, UN says
Suburb has suffered two months of bitter bombardment
GENEVA — More than 133,000 people have fled a suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus, in the face of the government’s military onslaught, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday.
The exodus from the suburb, eastern Ghouta — the last major rebel-held pocket near the capital city — comes as the United States and its allies weigh how to respond to a suspected chemical attack there.
The suburb suffered two months of ferocious bombardment by the Syrian military and by its Iranian and Russian allies, as the government of President Bashar Assad has retaken control of most of the region.
It is estimated that more than 1,600 people have been killed in the campaign.
On Sunday, groups in Douma, a part of eastern Ghouta, reported what appeared to be a chemical weapons attack by the government — though Russian and Syrian officials have denied chemical agents were used.
Experts and Western officials say that multiple times in its seven-year civil war, Syria has used chemical weapons against its own people, including a sarin gas attack in Ghouta in 2013 that by some estimates killed more than 1,000 people.
U.S. President Donald Trump was expected to unveil on Tuesday what he has promised would be a “forceful” response to the latest episode. And the UN Security Council was considering a U.S.-backed proposal to investigate chemical weapons attacks and determine blame for them.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the group that monitors compliance with an international chemical weapons treaty, said Tuesday it intended to send a team to Douma to investigate.
But that would depend on the co-operation of the Syrian government.
Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in eastern Ghouta and relief agencies are just beginning to grasp the full extent of humanitarian needs in an area where years of siege have created desperate levels of malnutrition among children and shortages of medicines.