(Zaman Al Wasl)- Fresh bombardment by the regime army Monday killed at least 10 civilians in the besieged Eastern Ghouta subrubs, including nine members of a same family, a monitor said.
Air strikes destroyed a building in Douma, the main town in the Eastern Ghouta area east of Damascus, and buried alive an entire family, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The death toll of Assad's bombardment reached a total of 522 in seven days.
Health authorities in opposition-run eastern Ghouta said late on Sunday that several people had suffered symptoms consistent with chlorine gas exposure, killing one child, after an explosion.
“Eastern Ghouta cannot wait, it is high time to stop this hell on earth,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, calling for implementation of the 30-day ceasefire sought by the Security Council.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia and Iran, has steadily clawed back control of areas where his opponents rose up against his rule in 2011. Eastern Ghouta is the last major insurgent stronghold near Damascus, the seat of his power.
The bombardment of eastern Ghouta over the past week has been one of the heaviest of Syria’s seven-year war, killing at least 522 people in seven days, according to a toll compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor.
On Saturday, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution demanding a 30-day cease-fire to allow for humanitarian aid deliveries.
Syria has been locked in a devastating conflict since early 2011 when the regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected ferocity.
According to UN officials, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict to date.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said in a statement on Sunday that from Nov. 14, 2017 to Saturday, 1,121 people, including 281 children and 171 women, had lost their lives amid the "barbaric offensive" against the Damascus suburb.
During this time, 18 attacks have been carried out on medical facilities, 32 attacks on local markets, and 11 attacks on schools, according to the statement, which also noted three chemical attacks, four cluster munition attacks, and 124 barrel bombs dropped in the region since mid-November.
"For seven years, Eastern Ghouta has been the target of purposeful, continued marginalization efforts that targeted the people’s social, economic, and mental structure there, as the Syrian regime and its allies have carried out various patterns of violations that qualify as crimes against humanity and war crimes, such as extrajudicial killing, sexual violence, enforced-disappearance, torture, siege, indiscriminate bombardment, as well as deliberate in some cases, targeting of protected objects, forced displacement, and the use of chemical weapons, as well as barrel bombs and other kinds of crimes.
"All of this has been going on in light of the existence of the United Nations, the Security Council, the law of war, the United Nations Commission of Human Rights, and the International Criminal Court," it said.
With Agencies
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