[caption id="attachment_165627" align="aligncenter" width="565"]
Ghouta: This photo released Tuesday Feb. 20, 2018, provided by the Syrian Civil Defense group known as the White Helmets, shows members of the Syrian Civil Defense group carrying a man who was wounded during airstrikes and shelling by Syrian government forces, in Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, Syria. Intense Syrian government shelling and airstrikes of rebel-held Damascus suburbs killed at least 100 people since Monday in what was the deadliest day in the area in three years, a monitoring group and paramedics said Tuesday. AP/PTI(AP2_20_2018_000169B)[/caption]
Damascus, Feb. 20 (IANS): At least 100 civilians, including 20 children, were killed and hundreds wounded as Syrian government forces bombarded rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area outside Damascus, a war monitor said.
The Eastern Ghouta is the last remaining opposition-held enclave near the capital and is completely surrounded by areas under government control.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said at least 470 people were injured, some critically, in a barrage of airstrikes, rocket fire and artillery slammed into towns across Eastern Ghouta on Monday.
If confirmed, it would make Monday one of the deadliest days for the district since it came under siege in 2013 by the government of Bashar al-Assad and subjected to devastating chemical attacks, the BBC reported.
Four hospitals, including a maternity facility, were also bombed in the area, reports said.
“We are standing before the massacre of the 21st century,” said a doctor. “If the massacre of the 1990s was Srebrenica, and the massacres of the 1980s were Halabja and Sabra and Chatila, then Eastern Ghouta is the massacre of this century right now.”
He added: “A little while ago a child came to me who was blue in the face and barely breathing, his mouth filled with sand... I don’t think they had what we do in any of the medical textbooks. A wounded child breathing with lungs of sand.
