DOUMA: New air strikes on the Syrian rebel enclave of Eastern Ghouta on Saturday took the civilian death toll from seven days of devastating bombardment to more than 500 after the United Nations again delayed a vote on a ceasefire.

A total of 127 children figure among the 510 dead in the bombing campaign that the regime launched last Sunday on the enclave just outside Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Britain-based monitor of the war said at least 32 civilians were killed in Saturday’s strikes, including eight children. A night of heavy bombardment sparked fires in residential districts, it said.

The Observatory has said the air strikes are being carried out by Syrian and Russian forces. Moscow, which intervened militarily in support of its Damascus ally in 2015, has denied any direct involvement in the Eastern Ghouta bombardment.

US President Donald Trump on Friday said Russia’s recent actions in Syria were a “disgrace”.

The UN Security Council had been due to hold a vote on Friday on a resolution calling for a month-long ceasefire to allow aid deliveries and the evacuation of seriously wounded civilians. But the vote was postponed until 1700 GMT on Saturday as Western powers bickered with Russia over the wording.

Turkey urged the international community to end the bloodshed in Eastern Ghouta.

Rebel fire on Damascus

Control of Eastern Ghouta is shared between two main Islamist factions, while Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate is also present, and Russia insists there can be no ceasefire with the jihadists or their allies.

Russia has been pressing for a negotiated withdrawal of rebel fighters and their families like the one that saw the government retake full control of second city Aleppo in December 2016.

But all three rebel groups have refused.

World leaders have expressed outrage at the plight of civilians in Eastern Ghouta, which UN chief Antonio Guterres called “hell on earth”, but have so far been powerless to halt the bloodshed.

The enclave is completely surrounded by government-controlled territory and its 400,000 residents are unwilling or unable to flee the deadly siege.

In one of the many unfolding dramas at a Douma field hospital, a young woman amputated from the knee breastfed a 40-day-old infant who had lost his entire family in the bombings. “She doesn’t know yet that her own daughter has been killed,” a nurse said.

Food supplies have been running dry, with bread no longer available on local markets.

“I haven’t eaten since the day before yesterday,” said a mother in a shelter with her two children in Douma, Eastern Ghouta’s main town. “They haven’t stopped crying for three days.” The cornered rebels in Eastern Ghouta have been firing back into Damascus, where six civilians were wounded on Saturday, state media said.

Around 20 people have been killed in eastern districts of the capital since Sunday, and many residents have sought temporary accommodation elsewhere for fear of a further intensification of the fighting.

Published in Dawn, February 25th, 2018