Syrian regime air strikes and artillery fire hit the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta for a sixth straight day killing 32 civilians, as the world struggled to reach a deal to stop the carnage. / AFP PHOTO / Ammar SULEIMAN
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Air strikes and artillery fire on the Syrian rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta have killed 500 civilians in seven days, 121 of them children, a monitor said on Saturday.
Deadly new strikes hit the enclave as the UN Security Council prepared to vote on a ceasefire resolution, while more bodies were recovered from the rubble from previous raids, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Few of Eastern Ghouta’s nearly 400,000 residents — mostly living in a scattering of towns across the semi-rural area east of the capital — ventured out on Friday.
An AFP correspondent in Douma, the enclave’s main town, saw a handful of people stealthily crossing rubble-strewn streets to assess damage to their property or look for food and water.
The bombing has been relentless since government and allied forces intensified their campaign on Sunday and rocket fire soon forced everybody to run for cover.
Exhausted and famished families cowered in cramped and damp basements, exchanging information on the latest casualties of the government’s blitz.
More than 2,000 people have been wounded.
Rebels have been firing back into the capital Damascus, where a hospital was hit, the official Syrian news agency SANA said.
© Agence France-Presse