Military spurs mass exodus
BEIRUT » Thousands of people streamed out of the Eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus on Thursday in the first mass exodus from that besieged enclave, after Syrian forces stormed a town in the biggest remaining rebel stronghold near the capital.
The throngs swarming out of the town of Hammouriya foreshadowed the chaos that may lie ahead as loyalist forces advance into the remaining rebel-held areas, home to an estimated 393,000 people, according to the United Nations.
The departures came after an overnight blitz of airstrikes that left civilians and fighters scrambling to escape, residents and human rights monitors reported. Syrian state television said 10,000 people had fled to government-held territory by midafternoon. An equal number of people fled in the other direction, racing across fields to remain behind rebel lines because they feared being detained by the government, residents said.
This latest government advance came as Syria marked the seventh anniversary of the uprising against President Bashar Assad, which began with peaceful protests before quickly mutating into a raging war.
The fight for Eastern Ghouta is becoming one of the bloodiest battles yet, with at least 1,540 people killed and nearly 6,000 injured since the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution mandating a 30- day cease-fire nearly three weeks ago, according to figures provided by the Eastern Ghouta health directorate.
As the scenes on Thursday demonstrated, the war that already has claimed the lives of as many as half a million people is far from over. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, which counts only civilian casualties, said in a report Thursday that 217,764 civilians have been killed since the first peaceful protests in March 2011. Huge numbers of men also have died fighting for both sides in a conflict that has drawn foreign powers into a scramble for influence over the strategic country, located at the heart of the Middle East.
Although Assad loyalists have recaptured much of the area they lost to the rebels, the opposition still controls about a fifth of the country. The mostly Islamist rebels have controlled the Eastern Ghouta cluster of towns and villages since the earliest days of the revolt. Although loyalist forces have now seized more than half of the enclave, the main population centers remain with the rebels, raising fears of even worse bloodshed ahead.
Far from halting the violence, the cease-fire resolution has seemed only to intensify the government push to recapture the enclave.
The offensive has accelerated despite appeals from the international community and warnings by the Trump administration that the United States is ready to take unilateral military action to enforce the truce.