Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Syrian sisters’ home bombed, Alaa, 8, injured
Bombs rain on eastern Gouta
THE home of two Syrian sisters, who were previously interviewed by eNCA, has been bombed and the younger girl, Alaa Alkhateeb, 8, injured.
Alkhateeb and her sister, Noor, 10, were interviewed for television after they took to social media to reveal the horror of their living conditions in rebel-held eastern Ghouta province and appeal for the international community to intervene.
It was reported by eNCA that the family’s home was apparently destroyed on Thursday night in a wave of bombings.
A tweet from the children said: “@Noor_and_Alaa Our house is destroyed Alaa is injured 😔#SaveGhouta Now#Ghouta#Syria”.
Yesterday eNCA broadcast a video showing an injured and weeping Alaa. The TV station was yesterday trying to contact the family.
The besieged eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of Damascus has experienced one of the fiercest air assaults of the seven-year civil war.
At least 416 people have been killed in the region since last Sunday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, with more than 2 100 wounded from the assault by Syria’s military and its allies.
Planes have struck residential areas in the enclave of 400 000 people and hit more than 12 hospitals, making it near impossible to treat the wounded.
Panos Moumtzis, UN humanitarian co-ordinator for Syria, said households in eastern Ghouta were without food, water or electricity in winter cold and 80% of the population of the town of Harasta was living underground.
Aid workers and residents said Syrian army helicopters had been dropping “barrel bombs” – oil drums packed with explosives and shrapnel – on marketplaces and medical centres.
Residents and insurgents in eastern Ghouta said Russian planes were also involved. Syrians said they could identify Russian aircraft because they fly at higher altitude than Syrian planes.
Damascus and Moscow denied using barrel bombs or hitting civilians. They said rebels held civilians as human shields.
Syrian army helicopters dropped fliers over eastern Ghouta, according to a media unit run by Assad’s Lebanese Hezbollah ally.
The fliers called on civilians to hand themselves over to the Syrian army in order to save their lives, with a passage highlighted on a map for a safe journey out of eastern Ghouta.
Sara Kayyali, Syria researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the situation in eastern Ghouta had deteriorated.
“Witnesses who we are speaking to on the ground are saying that it’s ‘ raining bombs’,” she told Reuters in Geneva.
Robert Mardini, Middle East regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the Red Cross was poised to offer emergency medical care in the enclave and carry out evacuations of wounded as soon as conditions permitted.
Moscow and Damascus said their assault on eastern Ghouta was necessary to defeat rebels who had been firing mortars on the capital – government territory – throughout the war.
“Those who support the terrorists are responsible” for the situation in eastern Ghouta,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters.
“Neither Russia nor Syria nor Iran are in that category of states, as they are waging an absolute war against terrorists in Syria.”
Video footage obtained by Reuters showed wreckage at the Al-Shifa Hospital in the town of Hammouriyeh. Staff said it had been hit by air strikes and artillery.
“The clinics department is out of service, the clinical care unit is out, the surgery unit is out, the incubator unit is out, the paediatric section is out, all of the departments of the hospital are completely out of service,” a man identified as a medical worker said.
Eastern Ghouta has been under siege by the Syrian army and allied forces since 2013. After government gains, it is the final rebel bastion near the capital.
The president has vowed to regain control of every inch of Syria. – Reuters and Weekend Argus