At least 200 dead in Syrian government airstrikes
Rebels control bombed area outside Damascus
BEIRUT — A surge in Syrian government airstrikes has killed at least 200 people over the past two days on the outskirts of Damascus, aid agencies said Tuesday, as the Syrian war ramps up and civilians again pay the price for the failure of international efforts to resolve it.
The bloodshed marked one of the deadliest episodes in the seven-year war, aid agencies and human rights monitors said, as nightfall brought more waves of bombing against the cluster of towns and villages known as Eastern Ghouta, one of the largest areas still under rebel control.
Residents said they had been cowering in their basements since Sunday as squadrons of fighter jets circled over their neighborhoods, taking turns bombing.
When the jets run low on fuel, they are replaced by more planes, sustaining a continuous roar of aircraft punctuated by explosions, said Firas Abdullah, an activist with the Ghouta Media Center.
Helicopters joined the warplanes, dropping crude devices known as barrel bombs crammed with nails and metal to make them more lethal, he said. “The situation here was always bad, but this is the worst we have ever seen,” Abdullah said.
Hundreds of people have been injured, flooding hospitals and clinics with casualties they are ill-equipped to treat after four years under siege. Medical facilities have been hit, too, with 12 hospitals and clinics struck by bombs and knocked out of action in the past two days, according to the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations. It put the toll of two days of bombing at more than 200 killed and more than 700 injured.
“The sheer intensity of airstrikes is leveling the city and killing civilians without any regard or mercy,” said Zedoun Al Zoebi, the head of UOSSM. “Medicine and medical supplies have not been allowed into the city for months now.”
The Syrian American Medical Society, which also supports hospitals in the area, put the 48-hour death toll at 250, the highest in Syria in an equivalent time frame since a 2013 sarin gas attack in Eastern Ghouta that killed about 1,400 people.
“Hospitals are overwhelmed. Floors are overflowing with injured and blood. Those patients we discharged a couple of days ago are now back with more serious injuries,” the Syrian American Medical Society quoted a doctor in Eastern Ghouta as saying.
The strikes are a reminder that a conflict many thought was winding down still has not run its course. Rather, many more battles lie ahead as Russian peace efforts falter and as Syrian President Bashar Assad seeks to assert his authority over all the areas he lost during the rebellion that erupted seven years ago.
American diplomacy is absent, hamstrung by the loss of U.S. influence since Russia intervened in support of Assad in 2015 and by a vacuum in the Syria office at the State Department. The last Syria envoy departed in March and has not been replaced.
State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States is “deeply concerned” by the bloodshed in Eastern Ghouta.
“This escalation is exacerbating the already grave human suffering of nearly 400,000 people,” she said, expressing U.S. support for a United Nations appeal for a monthlong cease-fire that was made more than two weeks ago.
The latest surge of violence is part of what appears to be a fresh government push to recapture the Eastern Ghouta area, which has been under the control of rebels since 2012 and besieged by government forces since 2013. Spanning 142 square miles, it is populated by more than 350,000 people.
Western aid agencies, which have been unable to operate inside Syria for years because of government restrictions but have partner arrangements with local aid agencies, echoed the calls for a cease-fire.
The area is controlled by an assortment of mostly Islamist rebel groups, the biggest of which, Jaish al-Islam, has participated in a year-old Russian-led initiative to resolve the conflict. Eastern Ghouta was designated as one of the “de-escalation” zones that formed the backbone of the process and were intended to diminish levels of violence to allow a chance for negotiations.