Bombs still rain down on the babies of Syria

AT LEAST 30 people – including 11 women and a child – were killed and more than 40 injured when Russian jets dropped bombs in a residential area of a rebel enclave in Syria.

At least four bombs flattened two buildings in the Eastern Ghouta town of Misraba, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Observatory – a war monitor based in Britain – claimed the strikes were carried out by Russian planes.

Pictures showed a Syrian child who was injured in the shelling receiving treatment at a makeshift hospital in the nearby rebel-held town of Douma.

An injured infant with wounds on her face was also pictured getting medical treatment inside the hospital.

Video footage posted by activ- ists on social media in Eastern Ghouta showed rescue workers pulling women and children from rubble. Backed by Russian strikes, government forces have escalated military operations against Eastern Ghouta in recent months.

They have been seeking to tighten a siege and residents and aid workers say starvation is being used as a weapon of war.

Russia reject Syrian opposition and rights groups’ claims that their jets have been responsible for the death of thousands of civilians since their intervention two years ago in the country’s seven-yearold war.

Moscow say they only attack hardline Islamists.

Jets also shelled Harasta, on the western edge of the enclave, where rebels this week overran a major military base which residents say the army uses to pound residential areas. Meanwhile, Syrian state news agency SANA said one person was killed and 22 injured in shelling of the Amara district of capital Damascus.

The United Nations claim about 400,000 civilians besieged in the area face “complete catastrophe” as aid deliveries by the government have been blocked and hundreds of people who need urgent medical attention have not been allowed outside the enclave.

Scores of hospitals and civil defence centres in Ghouta and across Syria have been bombed during the conflict. Opposition groups claim the aim is to paralyse life in rebel-held areas.

“There have been at least six major massacres perpetrated by Russia in indiscriminate bombing of cities and towns with thousands fleeing their homes in the last two weeks,” said Mustafa al Haj Yousef, the head of Idlib’s Civil Defence, rescuers who work in opposition-held areas.