Russian air strikes kill 37 civilians in Eastern Ghouta
11 CHILDREN AND WOMEN AMONG 28 KILLED IN SYRIAN REGIME STRIKE ON VILLAGE OF HAREM
Russian air strikes killed 37 civilians in the Arbeen area of the shrinking rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday.
“Russian air strikes and incendiary weapons killed the civilians in a basement from burning or suffocation” late on Thursday before a ceasefire came into effect in the area, Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman said.
Russia has denied being directly involved in air strikes on Eastern Ghouta.
In violence elsewhere, an air strike on a market in the village of Harem in northwestern Syria killed at least 28 people, according to observers and the opposition’s Civil Defence group.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the dead included 11 children and women, and the overall death toll could still rise since many others were critically wounded.
Meanwhile, Syrian regime TV and an opposition monitoring group reported that the second largest rebel group in eastern Ghouta has agreed to evacuate the area. A regime TV correspondent said 7,000 civilians and Failaq Al Rahman fighters will begin leaving four towns in eastern Ghouta as of today.
Also, carrying their light arms, hundreds of defeated rebels began evacuating with their families on Thursday from a devastated town in eastern Ghouta, an effective surrender under a deal with the regime after a long siege and bombing campaign of the enclave on the outskirts of Damascus.
End to rebellion
The departure of the powerful Ahrar Al Sham group — the first such arrangement for eastern Ghouta — could serve as a blueprint for fighters in other towns, bringing Bashar Al Assad’s regime closer to ending years of rebellion in the territory just east of the capital.
As night fell, Syrian regime TV showed dozens of white buses carrying opposition fighters and civilians pulling out in a long convoy after being parked all day on a main highway. Among the 1,580 evacuees from the town of Harasta were 413 gunmen, it said.
Earlier, a few fighters with automatic rifles slung on their shoulders were seen milling around the buses. As the sun set, a group of rebels knelt on the Harasta highway and prayed.
Ahrar Al Sham is a powerful, ultra-conservative Islamic group in Syria. It is one of the smaller rebel groups based in Eastern Ghouta — and the first to acknowledge defeat. Under the agreement with the Al Assad regime, the group’s fighters and their relatives will leave their base in the town of Harasta and head to opposition-controlled Idlib in northern Syria.
The deal will see 1,500 rebels and 6,000 civilians depart, according to the regime-affiliated Military Media Centre.
The convoy of buses from Harasta, their headlights blazing, was reminiscent of those ferrying defeated rebels out of eastern Aleppo in late 2016, following a similar agreement with the regime.
No return
“They are leaving toward Idlib with no return,” said Rabieh Dibeh, correspondent for regime-affiliated Al Ikhbariya TV, when the buses started moving.
The deal is modelled on others that have had rebels surrender swaths of territory around the capital and other major cities to the regime. In all cases, the arrangements followed indiscriminate bombing campaigns against hospitals, markets and other civilian targets, driving thousands from their homes. As Ahrar Al Sham rebels prepared to leave Harasta, thousands of civilians streamed out of other areas in eastern Ghouta that were still being bombed by the regime.
Dozens of the civilians appeared to be wounded, some hobbling on crutches, another with an eye injury.
Several children were seen crying in fear. A girl who appeared to be younger than 10, wearing a yellow dress, struggled to walk while carrying a toddler and some belongings.
The regime assault has sparked a tide of people trying to escape the violence in the Damascus suburbs. Some have moved deeper into the rebelheld enclave, while about 50,000 others have crossed the front lines toward regimecontrolled areas.
Rebel-held islands
The air and ground assault, which escalated February 18, has seen the once sprawling territory at the edge of the capital shrink to three disconnected rebel-held islands.
That has made it only a question of when — not if — the Russian-backed regime forces would recapture the entire region.