This Slaughter Must Stop!

Scores Killed as Syria Launches Heavy Air Strikes On Rebel-held Eastern Ghouta

By Hamza Al-Ajweh

February 20, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - Pro-government forces bombarded Syria’s eastern Ghouta on Tuesday, killing at least 49 people, after the heaviest one-day death toll there in three years on Monday, a war monitoring group said.

Some 127 people were killed in air raids, rocket strikes and shelling of the area near Damascus on Monday, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

About 190 have died since the bombing intensified late on Sunday and 850 have been injured, it said.

The United Nations called for an immediate ceasefire in the area on Monday, saying the situation was “spiralling out of control” after an “extreme escalation in hostilities”.

The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations, a coalition of international agencies that funds hospitals in Syria, said bombs had hit five hospitals in eastern Ghouta on Monday.

In Geneva, the U.N. children’s fund issued a blank “statement” to express its outrage at the casualties among Syrian children, saying it had run out of words.

The violence in eastern Ghouta is part of a wider escalation in fighting on several fronts in Syria as President Bashar al-Assad pushes to end the seven-year rebellion against him.

Mortars fired by rebels in eastern Ghouta landed in Damascus on Tuesday, causing two deaths and several injuries, Syrian state media reported. At least one person died from rebel mortar fire in the capital on Monday.

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Bodycam footage shows children being rescued from rubble in eastern Ghouta, Syria

 

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

- See Also -

Stephen F. Cohen: Tales of the New Cold War: Gunfight in Syria. - Audio

 

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