Syrian government strikes kill 250 civilians in 48 hours
Far north of there, pro-Assad fighters defy Turkey leader
BEIRUT — Government forces bombed the northeastern suburbs of the Syrian capital for a second straight day Tuesday, killing more than 100 people and raising the specter of a full-scale offensive that could spell catastrophe for the nearly 400,000 residents trapped under siege.
Rescuers raced to reach survivors in the devastated Damascus suburbs known as eastern Ghouta as warplanes and helicopter gunships circled overhead, bombing hospitals, apartment blocks, markets and other civilian targets. The suburbs are the last major stronghold for rebels in the capital region.
At least 250 civilians, including 58 children, were killed during the 48 hours of unrelenting onslaught that began Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. Another 1,000 people were wounded, it said. “We no longer have the words to describe children’s suffering and our outrage,” the U.N. children’s agency said in a terse statement about the carnage.
In northern Syria, meanwhile, pro-government gunmen crossed into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in an agreement with the main Kurdish militia there to defend against a Turkish offensive intended to uproot the main Kurdish militia from the area.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the pro-government fighters had been warned to stay out of Afrin, where Syrian state television showed they were immediately targeted by Turkish shelling.
“Of course it is impossible for us to allow this,” Erdogan said. “They will pay a heavy price.”
Regarding eastern Ghouta, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared to endorse the assault, which he said was backed by the Russian air force. “In keeping with the existing agreements, the fight against terrorism cannot be restricted by anything,” he said.
Russia has been an unwavering ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces and was instrumental to the all-out assault in late 2016 that ejected rebels from their enclave in eastern Aleppo — an outcome that Lavrov said could serve as a model for eastern Ghouta.
Pro-government forces have been amassing since the weekend on the perimeter of the rebel-held region, a collection of towns and farmland that once provided grain and fruit to the capital before nearly five years of warfare turned it into a landscape of havoc and despair.
The towns of eastern Ghouta were among the first to organize into selfgoverning collectives and shake off government rule after popular demonstrations against Assad swept through the country in 2011, eventually leading to civil war. They are also among the last to resist Assad’s determined campaign to bring every last rebellious corner of the country to heel. Assad and his allies maintain they are fighting a war on terrorism.