Syria, Russia escalate punishing attacks
BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian opposition rescue teams pulled babies from incubators in a hospital under attack, rushing them to safety in a pickup truck. Elderly patients lay motionless on the ground and rescue workers searched for survivors in the rubble of a destroyed apartment building as stepped-up airstrikes by Syrian government forces and their Russian allies on the country’s last remaining rebel strongholds killed at least 28 civilians on Monday.
“It is like the end of days,” said Raed Saleh, the head of the first-responders known as White Helmets, describing the last 24 hours of attacks on the opposition-held eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta and northwestern Idlib province.
The escalating offensive, which included a suspected chlorine attack a day earlier, reached a new ferocity after insurgents downed a Russian Su-25 over the weekend, the first time they scored such a major hit against the government’s main ally, Moscow.
Russia has waged a punishing aerial campaign against Syria’s armed opposition since intervening in the civil war on the side of its ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, in 2015. Ceasefire deals have failed to quell the violence or restore humanitarian aid to besieged Ghouta, where 400,000 residents are holed up amid warnings of a looming humanitarian disaster.
“If a Russian plane was downed, revenge should not be on civilians and children,” Saleh said. “Now more than any other day, we need the international community to restore the humanity it has lost in Syria.”
The al-Qaeda-linked Levant Liberation Committee, which is the dominant militant group in Idlib, said its fighters shot down the Russian jet near the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province and killed its pilot after he ejected from the plane. Rebels have previously claimed to have downed Syrian government planes or drones, but it was the first time they hit a Russian aircraft.
Russia’s military bases in western Syria were also hit last month in a series of drone attacks, challenging Moscow’s gains in the country still torn by conflict.
Since then, activists say Russian and Syrian government forces have stepped up their attacks.
Activists and rescue workers reported at least 28 civilians, including six children, were killed on Monday in Ghouta, where nearly 40 airstrikes hit the suburb that is the last opposition stronghold in Damascus.
In Idlib, two hospitals have been hit with airstrikes since Sunday and at least 14 people killed. Rescue workers continued Monday to sift through the wreckage of a six-story building flattened a day earlier, pulling out three bodies after daylight.
At least eight residents remained missing when the search was suspended at nightfall, one rescuer said.