Airstrikes yesterday hit Syria’s Eastern Ghouta for a third straight day, bringing the civilian death toll to nearly 200, as the UN said the situation in the rebel enclave was spinning “out of control.”
Airstrikes and rocket and artillery fire have battered the rebel-held enclave since Sunday in apparent preparation for a government ground assault on the besieged region.
At least 194 civilians have been killed, among them 57 children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
On Monday alone, 127 civilians, including 39 children, were killed in the bombardment — the single bloodiest day for Eastern Ghouta in four years.
Fresh airstrikes yesterday morning killed at least 50 civilians, including 13 children, the Britain-based war monitor said.
Held by rebels since 2012, Eastern Ghouta is the last opposition pocket around Damascus and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is keen to retake it with an apparently imminent ground assault.
Photo: EPA
The UN’s regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria Panos Moumtzis has said that the targeting of civilians in the enclave “must stop now.”
“The humanitarian situation of civilians in East Ghouta is spiralling out of control. It’s imperative to end this senseless human suffering now,” Moumtzis said on Monday.
The UN has repeatedly called for a monthlong ceasefire across Syria’s front lines, from Eastern Ghouta to the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in the northwest, which Turkey yesterday threatened to lay siege to in the coming days.
“February 19 was the one of the worst days that we’ve ever had in the history of this crisis,” an exhausted doctor in a hospital in Eastern Ghouta said.
Identifying himself as Abu al-Yasar, he described treating a one-year-old brought into the Arbin hospital with blue skin and a faint pulse, rescued from under the rubble.
“I opened his mouth to put in a breathing tube and I found it packed with dirt,” Abu al-Yaar said.
He pulled out the dirt as fast as possible, put in the breathing tube and managed to save the baby’s life.
“This is just one story from among hundreds of wounded,” he said.
The bloodshed prompted the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, yesterday to issue a largely blank statement to express its anger.
“We no longer have the words to describe children’s suffering and our outrage,” the agency said in a brief postscript beneath the empty space on the page. “Do those inflicting the suffering still have words to justify their barbaric acts?”
More than 400,000 people live in Eastern Ghouta, which has been surrounded by government troops since 2013. Food, medicine and other basic necessities are nearly impossible to obtain.
Eastern Ghouta is mostly held by two hardline rebel groups — Jaish al-Islam and Faylaq al-Rahman — though extremists have a smaller foothold.
The factions often fire rockets and mortar rounds into residential neighborhoods of east Damascus.
Yesterday, at least four people were killed and 15 wounded by rebel fire on the capital, state television reported.
Al-Watan newspaper, which is close to the Syrian government, said that the bombing campaign “comes ahead of a vast operation on Ghouta, which might start on the ground at any moment.”
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique