Dozens killed in Syria as civilians flee onslaught

SYRIAN government and Russian air strikes have killed at least 46 civilians in a besieged town outside Damascus, while Turkish attacks on a Kurdish-held town in northern Syria left at least 22 dead, officials said.

The death toll came a day after Syria passed the seven-year mark in its relentless civil war.

In Damascus’ rebel-held enclave of eastern Ghouta, Syrian and Russian jets struck the town of Kafr Batna with cluster bombs, napalmlike incendiary weapons and conventional explosives, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The assault was part of a campaign by President Bashar Assad’s forces to retake the town and the rest of the enclave from the rebels.

A medical charity supporting hospitals in the Ghouta region, the Syrian American Medical Society, said doctors in Kafr Batna were treating patients for severe burn wounds.

The charity said it recorded 40 casualties on Friday. The Syrian Civil Defence search-and-rescue group said it had identified 42 bodies so far.

Exhausted and shell-shocked civilians streamed out of eastern Ghouta for the second consecutive day to buses arranged by the government to take them to a centre for identification and relief.

A man interviewed on state-affiliated al-Ikhbariya TV said he had gone two days without food. Others said rebels had hoarded food and humiliated civilians, even shooting people trying to leave.

The UN has warned of a malnutrition crisis in eastern Ghouta, which human rights groups have blamed on the government blockade.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said almost 5,000 civilians had been evacuated on Friday, after more than 10,000 left the day before.

The assault on eastern Ghouta has devastated towns across the region and damaged and destroyed more than a dozen hospitals. At least 1,300 civilians have been killed under shelling and air strikes.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said the Russian military and the Syrian government would extend a “ceasefire” in Damascus’ rebelheld suburbs for as long as it takes to allow all the civilians to leave.

In northern Syria, Kurdish officials said Turkish shelling and air strikes killed at least 22 civilians on Friday in the town of Afrin.

The Turkish military urged civilians to leave and the Syrian Kurdish militiamen to surrender to besieging Turkish forces.

The media office for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led and US-backed force that operates in the Kurdish autonomous region in the north, said at least 30 were wounded in Friday’s attacks.

Since their offensive began in January, Turkish forces have nearly encircled Afrin in an effort to drive Syrian Kurdish fighters from the town and the surrounding region.

Thursday saw the largest singleday exodus of civilians in Syria’s civil war. The government offensive has pushed further into eastern Ghouta, chipping away at one of the largest and most significant opposition strongholds since the early days of the rebellion.