Afrin - At least 194 civilians have been killed, among them 57 children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Published: Tue 20 Feb 2018, 11:00 PM
Updated: Wed 21 Feb 2018, 4:58 PM
The UN children's fund said on Tuesday it no longer has the words to describe children's suffering as air strikes hit Syria's Eastern Ghouta for a third straight day, bringing the civilian death toll to nearly 200.
On Monday alone, 127 civilians, including 39 children, were killed in the bombardment - the single bloodiest day for Eastern Ghouta in four years. Air strikes and rocket and artillery fire have battered the rebel-held enclave since Sunday in apparent preparation for a government ground assault on the besieged region.
"No words will do justice to the children killed, their mothers, their fathers and their loved ones," said Geert Cappelaere, Unicef regional director for the Middle East and North Africa. Those words were followed by a blank page.
At least 194 civilians have been killed, among them 57 children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Fresh air strikes on Tuesday morning killed at least 50 civilians, including 13 children, the Britain-based war monitor said.
Shocked UN has run out of words
The UN children's fund Unicef issued a blank "statement" on Tuesday to express its outrage at mass casualties among Syrian children in the besieged enclave of Eastern Ghouta and neighbouring Damascus.
"No words will do justice to the children killed, their mothers, their fathers and their loved ones," the release from Uniceft's regional director Geert Cappalaere began.
There followed 10 empty lines with quote marks indicating missing text, and an explanatory footnote.
"Unicef is issuing this blank statement. We no longer have the words to describe children's suffering and our outrage," it said.
"Do those inflicting the suffering still have words to justify their barbaric acts?"
Forces loyal to President Bashar Al Assad have been besieging almost 400,000 civilians trapped inside Eastern Ghouta for years, but the siege has tightened this year and attacks on the enclave have intensified.
Siege tactics and indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas contravene the internationally-agreed "rules of war".
Pro-government forces carried out air raids on Eastern Ghouta overnight on Monday and early on Tuesday, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. More than 100 people were killed in air raids, rocket strikes and shelling of the area on Monday, it added.
Bombs rain down on civilians
Held by rebels since 2012, Ghouta is last opposition pocket near Damascus
Air strikes hit Syria's Eastern Ghouta for a third straight day on Tuesday, bringing the civilian death toll to nearly 200 as the UN warned the situation in the rebel enclave was spinning "out of control".
A Syrian man carries a wounded infant at a makeshift hospital in the rebel-held town of Douma, in Eastern Ghouta, on Tuesday. - AFP
Air strikes and rocket and artillery fire have battered the rebel-held enclave since Sunday in apparent preparation for a government ground assault on the besieged region.
At least 194 civilians have been killed, among them 57 children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
On Monday alone, 127 civilians, including 39 children, were killed in the bombardment - the single bloodiest day for Eastern Ghouta in four years.
Fresh air strikes on Tuesday morning killed at least 50 civilians, including 13 children, the Britain-based war monitor said.
Held by rebels since 2012, Eastern Ghouta is the last opposition pocket around Damascus and President Bashar Al Assad is keen to retake it with an apparently imminent ground assault.
The UN's regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria Panos Moumtzis has warned that the targeting of civilians in the enclave "must stop now".
"The humanitarian situation of civilians in East Ghouta is spiralling out of control. It's imperative to end this senseless human suffering now," Moumtzis said.
The UN has repeatedly called for a month-long ceasefire across Syria's front lines, from Eastern Ghouta to the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in the northwest, which Turkey threatened on Tuesday to lay siege to in the coming days.
"February 19 was the one of the worst days that we've ever had in the history of this crisis," said an exhausted doctor.
Identifying himself as Abu Al Yasar, he described treating a one-year-old brought into the Arbin hospital with blue skin and a faint pulse, rescued from under the rubble.
"I opened his mouth to put in a breathing tube and I found it packed with dirt," Abu Al Yaar told.
Parents in frenetic search for children
Nidal had to unfold several little shrouds, all lined up on the concrete floor of the morgue of the hospital in Syria's Douma, before recognising the body of his daughter Farah.
She was among dozens of civilians killed on Monday in the latest wave of Syrian regime air strikes on the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta enclave, of which Douma is the main town.
At least nine of the victims were children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring organisation. More than 300 people were wounded.
As more bodies were brought in from the chaos of the emergency room, Nidal knelt down near his lifeless daughter and cried - not just for her but also for the five other children he lost track of in the bombardment.
Farah was killed in the town of Masraba and her body brought to Douma by paramedics, who have been completely overwhelmed since the regime intensified its strikes two weeks ago. "I have five other children I know nothing about, all five of them and their mother," he sobbed, resting his hand on the black shroud his daughter was wrapped in.
"Is there a fridge to put her in?", he asked.
A volunteer for the civil defence, an organisation known as the White Helmets, awkwardly looked for something to tell the bereaved father and eventually said: "May God reward you."
Nidal later told that he managed to find his other children.
Douma hospital was full of distraught civilians: one father slapped his forehead after finding his two dead children, another erupted into tears as he discovered the body of his newborn.
Lost and wounded children also cried for their parents, others sat silently, rivulets of blood running down their faces whitened by dust from the strikes, as they received treatment.
Two of them sat next to each other on a cot, shellshocked and blood staining their fresh bandages.
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