More than 100 civilians have been killed in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta in the past 24 hours, the largest single-day death toll in the rebel-held area in nearly three years, according to observers.
At least 20 children were among those killed by Syrian regime shelling and airstrikes on the besieged Damascus suburb, which rights activists and residents described as being under “constant bombardment.”
“These are the worst days of our lives in Ghouta,” Eastern Ghouta hospital director and pediatrician Amani Ballour told CNN.
“We in Ghouta have been getting hit by airstrikes for more than 5 years and this is not new to us … but we have never seen anything like this escalation.”
The death toll from Monday is the largest in Eastern Ghouta since an alleged chemical attack killed hundreds in the area in 2015, Rami Abdel Rahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told CNN. That attack sparked an international outcry and nearly prompted military intervention by the Obama administration.
Doctors told CNN that medics were working around the clock treating hundreds of injured people. Several medical facilities in Eastern Ghouta were reported to have been struck on Monday.
Medical supplies were already in short supply due to a years-long siege of the area that began in 2012. Now, Syrian regime forces are accelerating their offensive against the suburb, one of the last rebel-controlled areas in the country.
“I can tell you that the situation is very catastrophic … there were four hospitals that were destroyed and cannot be able to continue their work in helping people in Eastern Ghouta,” doctor Fares Ouraiba told CNN from the Damascus suburb. He said most of the dead were women and children.
Desperation in Eastern Ghouta
Nearly 400,000 people live in Eastern Ghouta. They account for 94% of all currently besieged Syrians, according to the United Nations, and many are in desperate need of humanitarian aid.
A UN and Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid convoy arrived in Eastern Ghouta last Wednesday. It was the first convoy to enter the area since November of last year, Reuters reported.
Eastern Ghouta is meant to be one of the so-called “de-escalation zones” agreed to in a deal struck by Russia, Turkey and Iran last year. In theory, such zones — also referred to as non-conflict or safe zones — are meant to be areas where civilians can live without being targeted by any party in Syria’s war.
Attacks in Eastern Ghouta in recent weeks have provoked an international outcry. Since November, hundreds of civilians have been killed or injured in airstrikes and shelling across the country, according to the United Nations.
Why now?
With ISIS having lost its territorial footing in the past year, Russian-backed Syrian forces are making a major push to overrun the country’s remaining rebel strongholds.
The offensive in Eastern Ghouta is developing in parallel to a campaign in the northwest province of Idlib — another so-called safe zone that hosts more than 1 million internally displaced people.
What’s next?
Residents of Eastern Ghouta are bracing themselves for what they believe is an imminent ground invasion by Syrian regime forces. They said that events in their suburb are playing out similarly to the 2016 offensive in Aleppo, when rebels and ISIS militants were expelled by a government offensive that reduced much of the city to rubble.
“This could be one of the worst attacks in Syrian history, even worse than the siege on Aleppo,” Zedoun al Zoebi, CEO of the Paris-based Union of Medical Care & Relief Organizations said in a statement Monday. “The sheer intensity of airstrikes is leveling the city, and killing civilians without any regard or mercy.”
What’s the world doing?
International monitors are sounding alarm bells about the offensive in Eastern Ghouta, but aside from the aid convoy that made it into the area last week, little else has changed in recent days aside from an uptick in the bloodshed.
On Tuesday the UN children’s agency UNICEF issued a blank statement condemning what it described as the “war on children in Syria”.
“UNICEF is issuing this blank statement. We no longer have the words to describe children’s suffering and our outrage,” the agency said in a footnote. “Do those inflicting the suffering still have words to justify their barbaric acts?”
“In the end the Syrian government has followed the systematic policy, the systematic strategy of besiegement and bombardment until people have to give up and then they are forcibly displaced,” Amnesty International’s regional campaigner on Syria Leen Hashem told CNN.
“What we have seen in Aleppo we’re seeing again in Ghouta today. Not even a proper aid convoy is being allowed to enter Ghouta, and the international community is just watching.”