Talks on truce as 400 die
Hospitals hit in offensive on Syrian enclave
FRESH bombardment on Eastern Ghouta killed dozens on Thursday, bringing the number of dead civilians in a five-day assault by the Syrian government to more than 400.
Mounting calls for a humanitarian truce in one of the bloodiest episodes of Syria’s seven-year conflict failed to stop 46 more people being killed by air-strikes and rocket fire.
Regime backer Russia said there was no agreement at the UN Security Council on a 30day ceasefire for Syria and presented amendments to a draft resolution that would allow aid deliveries and the evacuation of civilians from besieged Eastern Ghouta.
As diplomats wrangled over a UN vote, people huddled in basements while government forces pounded the enclave with rockets and bombs, turning towns into fields of ruins and even hitting hospitals.
Aid group Doctors Without Borders said 13 of the facilities it supports in Eastern Ghouta had been damaged or destroyed in three days, leaving remaining staff with very little to save the hundreds of wounded brought to them every day.
In the hospital mortuary in Douma, the main town in the enclave just east of Damascus, bodies wrapped in white shrouds were already lined up on the floor, two of them children.
“Five days of air-strikes and intense artillery fire by the regime and its Russian ally have killed 403 civilians, including 95 children,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Russia has so far denied direct involvement in the assault on Ghouta but the pro-government Syrian newspaper AlWatan reported on Thursday that Russian warplanes and advisers had joined the battle.
The US said on Thursday Russia had “unique responsibility” for the deaths.
“Without Russia backing Syria, the devastation and the deaths would certainly not be occurring,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told journalists.
Regime and allied forces have been massing around the enclave, in which an estimated 400 000 people live, ahead of a likely ground offensive to flush out holdout Islamist and jihadist groups.
The aid community voiced its frustration as the world appeared once again powerless to stop a conflict that has left almost 350 000 dead in seven years and caused destruction rarely seen since World War 2. — AFP