Syrian War: Ghouta bombing leaves 300 dead, ‘flagrant war crimes,’ suffering children with no food, shelter, medicine
While the Syrian military says it is trying to liberate the area from terrorists, it has also been accused of targeting civilians with a death toll reported at 300 and rising.
A doctor working in Eastern Ghouta says the situation is “catastrophic,” claiming that the international community has abandoned the people living there.
“We don’t have anything – no food, no medicine, no shelter,” Dr Bassam told the BBC. “We don’t have bread. We don’t have anything.”
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“Maybe every minute we have 10 or 20 air strikes,” Dr Bassam said.
Three days of bombing in the area has reportedly killed nearly 300 people.
The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) said today that “At least 260 people were killed and 500 injured in the rebel held-enclave of Eastern Ghouta between Monday and Tuesday evening…”
Nearly 400,000 people are trapped in Eastern Ghouta, many of them in desperate need of humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations.
Amnesty International said “flagrant war crimes” were being committed on an “epic scale” there, and the UN children’s agency UNICEF published a blank statement, saying in a footnote there were “no words” to describe the suffering of children.
SAMS stated that thirteen medical facilities were targeted on Monday and Tuesday and they have lost three of its health workers in the strikes. Four of those facilities have been completely destroyed and two have temporarily suspended their activities.
“They targeted everything: shops, markets, hospitals, schools, mosques, everything,” Dr Bassam said. “I will treat someone – and after a day or two they come again, injured again.”
“Where is the international community, where is (the UN) Security Council… they abandoned us. They leave us to be killed,” he said.
BBC’s Jonathan Marcus writes:
The catastrophe in eastern Ghouta is unfolding as the war in Syria enters a new and even more dangerous phase. The international community is impotent to act, not least because key members of that community are deeply implicated in what is going on, not least Russia.
Other regional players like Turkey and Iran are acting to secure their own long-term strategic interests. So too is Washington though its goals seem uncertain now that IS is defeated and the Assad regime remains in power.
There is no consensus in the international community, no great leadership in evidence, and no shared sense of what Syria’s future should be. Just as the international community has failed to halt the use of chemical weapons, so too it has been unable to secure humanitarian access to those at greatest risk.
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