Russian, Syrian bombings leave at least 69 dead

BEIRUT: Renewed Syrian army bombardment of rebelheld Eastern Ghouta outside Damascus yesterday killed 14 people, despite a ceasefire deal for the region, a monitor said. Eastern Ghouta, one of the last remaining opposition strongholds in Syria, is among four so-called “de-escalation zones” set up earlier this year under a deal agreed by regime allies Russia and Iran, and rebel supporter Turkey. But despite the deal, violence has spiraled in the area in recent days.

Yesterday, air strikes and artillery fire on several parts of Eastern Ghouta killed at least 14 civilians, the Britainbased monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The deaths come a day after at least 23 civilians were killed in the region in regime air strikes and artillery fire, among them four children. The Observatory says regime bombardment of Eastern Ghouta has killed more than 100 people in the past two weeks. Rebels have also fired from the area into Damascus in deadly attacks of a kind rarely seen in the capital.

Eastern Ghouta is already in the grip of a humanitarian crisis caused by a crushing regime siege of the area since 2013 that has caused severe food and medical shortages. Humanitarian access to Eastern Ghouta has remained limited despite the implementation of the ceasefire zone, and a United Nations official has named the region as the “epicenter of suffering” in Syria. More than 340,000 people have been killed in Syria since its conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

53 killed in Deir Ezzor Meanwhile, at least 53 civilians, including 21 children, perished early Sunday morning when Russian air strikes hit “residential buildings” in a village held by the Islamic State group in eastern Syria, a monitor said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes hit the village of Al-Shafah in Deir Ezzor province, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates River. The Observatory relies on a network of sources inside Syria, and says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

The monitor had initially given a death toll of 34 civilians but the number spiked after more bodies were recovered. “The toll increased after removing the debris in a long day of rescue operation,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding the strikes hit “residential buildings”. At least 18 people were also wounded in the air raids, he added. Russia is a close ally of Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad, and in September 2015 began a military intervention in support of his government that has gradually helped Damascus regain territory.

Syria’s Deir Ezzor is one of the last places IS jihadists hold territory in the country, after being driven from their major strongholds including their one-time de facto Syrian capital Raqqa city. The oil-rich eastern province that borders Iraq was once almost completely under IS control, but the jihadists now hold just nine percent of Deir Ezzor, according to the Observatory. They have faced two separate offensives there, one led by the regime with Russian backing and the other by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters. —Agencies