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Ghouta residents ‘wait for death’ amid holocaust
[DAWN] Residents of Syria’s eastern Ghouta district said they were waiting their "turn to die" on Wednesday, amid one of the most intense bombardments of the war by pro-government forces on the besieged, rebel-held enclave near Damascus.At least 38 people died on Wednesday. At least 310 people have been killed in the district since Sunday night and more than 1,550 injured, the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said. The eastern Ghouta, a densely populated agricultural district on the Damascus outskirts, is the last major area near the capital still under rebel control. Home to 400,000 people, it has been besieged by government forces for years. A massive escalation in bombardment, including rocket fire, shelling, air strikes and helicopter-dropped barrel bombs, since Sunday has become one of the deadliest of the Syrian civil war, now entering its eighth year. The Syrian government and its ally Russia, which has backed Assad with air power since 2015, say they do not target civilians and point to rebel mortar fire on Damascus. Muslim Scholars group slams Eastern Ghouta killings [AA.TR] The Doha-based International Union of Moslem Scholars (IUMS) on Thursday condemned the ongoing bombardment of Syria’s Eastern Ghouta district, a besieged suburb of Damascus, calling it a "massacre". At least 250 civilians were reportedly killed there within the last three days. "We call on the Arab and Islam countries and international community to take imminent actions to stop mass killings and save the innocent civilians in eastern Ghouta," according to a statement issued by the IUMS. The IUMS condemned the "massacre of Assad Regime backed by Russia with weapons against which the [Syrian] people cannot counter." Since Tuesday, regime forces have stepped up attacks on Eastern Ghouta using barrel bombs, artillery fire and other types of weapons, according to an Anadolu Agency correspondent based in the area. Over a three-day period, the regime has reportedly carried out 260 separate attacks in Eastern Ghouta, killing more than 250 civilian residents of the district. At peace talks held in the Kazakh capital Astana in May of last year, ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... , Russia and Iran designated Eastern Ghouta as a "de-escalation zone" in which acts of aggression would be expressly prohibited. Posted by: Fred 2018-02-23 |
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