The intensity of a Russia-backed assault on a former rebel stronghold in Syria using suspected chemical weapons and cluster bombs has been laid bare in a new report.
The population of eastern Ghouta, an area on the outskirts of Damascus, endured years under a siege enforced by the Syrian regime since an uprising against President Bashar al Assad's rule began in 2011.
Government airstrikes also targeted the area, where rebel forces were entrenched amongst civilian families. The area finally fell back under government control in April of this year after a 49-day assault.
The report by the Atlantic Council think tank, which a number of organisations contributed to including the online investigative outlet Bellingcat, said 16,934 strikes were documented in eastern Ghouta during this period.
This amounted to an average of 345.6 per day. The heaviest day of bombardment was 21 February, with 1,658 attacks recorded, it said.
"Locals reported that corpses and body parts were often left rotting under the rubble and even strewn in the streets due to the danger and difficulty in retrieving them," according to the report.
"Multiple victims were buried in mass graves with merely numbers attached to their improvised shrouds, as relatives and friends were unable to reach the hospitals and morgues to identify their loved ones."
The report counted "at least six suspected chemical weapon attacks, five of which were verified", according to a summary of the findings.
The deadliest suspected chemical weapons attack was on the besieged town of Douma on 7 April in which dozens of people died.
That atrocity prompted the United States, Britain and France to launch co-ordinated strikes against the Syrian regime's chemical weapons capabilities a week later.
The publication this week of the investigation by the Atlantic Council was timed to raise awareness about the actions of President Assad's regime at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
It is also intended to serve as a warning of what could be unleashed by Syrian and Russian forces on the final rebel bastion of Idlib province, in northwestern Syria, if a deal brokered between Moscow and Ankara to prevent a military offensive fails, its authors said.
The report said: "The regime's takeover of Ghouta… was the culmination of years of 'kneel or starve' siege tactics, indiscriminate aerial bombardment, cynical manipulation of truce and ceasefire, and the likely use of chemical weapons against population zones.
"The significance lies less in the regime using these tactics - it was reasonable to expect it would do anything it could to ensure its own survival-than in the fact that it not only went unpunished for, but ultimately was rewarded by, the fall of Ghouta."
The Atlantic Council heavily criticised the international community for failing to respond to stop all of the other deadly assaults by Assad forces and their Russian and Iranian backers, below the level of chemical weapons.
(SKY)
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