GASPING FOR LIFE
The innocent victims of a ‘gas attack’ in Syria as Assad forces continue bombing onslaught
BEWILDERED and afraid, these are some of the innocent victims of a suspected chemical attack in Syria.
Too young to understand the horrors around them, the toddlers huddle together under a blanket as they are treated at a makeshift hospital in the rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta.
A three-year-old died and at least 13 other children suffered breathing difficulties after a regime warplane struck the region, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
A woman was also left in a critical condition. Two days after the UN Security Council called for a ceasefire, President Bashar al-Assad’s government continued its bombing onslaught of the Damascus suburb.
A doctor, known as Yaqub, who treated those affected, said he suspected ‘chemical weapons, probably a chlorine gas attack’. He added: ‘Most of the patients have chlorine odour on their clothes and their skin. Many have dyspnoea [breathing difficulties] and skin and eye irritations.’
Chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton-Gordon said the aim of chlorine is to ‘push people out of cellars and tunnels and into the open where they are susceptible to conventional bombs and bullets.’
Russian president Vladimir Putin yesterday ordered daily
‘They will bomb us as usual’
‘humanitarian pauses’ in eastern Ghouta between 9am and 2pm, from today.
In the House of Commons, Boris Johnson appeared to make the case for British air strikes against the Assad regime if there is proof of chemical weapons being used, saying the West must not ‘stand idly by’.
Civilians caught in the violence mocked Mr Putin’s order of a limited, five-hour daily truce. ‘It is like legitimising the strikes on civilians,’ said activist Firas Abdullah, a resident of Douma, a town in the region where at least 13 members of a family were killed Monday when their home collapsed after an airstrike.
‘They will be so kind to grant us a mere five hours when they will not bomb us. Then the rest of the day, they will bomb us as usual. It is like a permission to kill,’ Mr Abdullah said.
A weekend resolution approved by the UN Security Council for a 30-day cease-fire across Syria failed to stop the carnage in the eastern Ghouta region that has killed more than 500 people since last week.
At least 34 people were killed yesterday by airstrikes and shelling, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The UN estimates that nearly 400,000 people live in dire conditions from the siege in eastern Ghouta, which has been under intensive bombing by government forces for weeks.
Other Ghouta residents also scoffed at the Russian move, saying it reminded them of a similar one for a besieged eastern district of Aleppo in 2016.
Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said Mr Putin has ordered daily ‘humanitarian pauses’ starting today.
Major General Yuri Yevtushenko, head of the Russian military’s Center for Reconciliation in Syria, said Syrian authorities set up a ‘humanitarian corridor’ for evacuating civilians and would distribute leaflets with specific information. He said the al-Qaida-linked militants and some rebel groups in eastern Ghouta are preventing civilians from leaving and using them as human shields while continuing to shell Damascus.
The political leader of the Army of Islam, the strongest rebel group in eastern Ghouta, called the Russian order ‘regrettable’, saying Moscow sought to circumvent the UN’s unanimously approved resolution. Mohammed Alloush of the Army of Islam told The Associated Press: ‘We want a total and lasting ceasefire in accordance with the UN resolution and one that opens corridors for humanitarian aid.’