Air strikes kill 17 civilians in Syria

BEIRUT: Regime and Russian air strikes on a rebel-held enclave near the Syrian capital killed at least 17 civilians on Saturday, a war monitor said.

Eastern Ghouta, one of the last remaining opposition strongholds in the country, is the target of near-daily air raids.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday’s deadliest strikes had hit the Hammuriyeh district, killing 12 civilians including two children.

An AFP reporter in Hammuriyeh saw residential buildings with their facades blown open, collapsing into streets strewn with rubble.

Residents including members of the White Helmets rescue group rushed to rescue the wounded.

Running past a burning car, one man held a crying boy in his arms, while another carried the apparently lifeless body of a child through the streets.

Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said Syrian and Russian aircraft had "continued their intense bombardment of Eastern Ghouta, targeting several residential areas".

He said those killed also included two people in the district of Madira and three in Erbin, adding that 35 people were also wounded in the three areas.

The Britain-based monitor relies on a network of sources inside Syria and says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

At the start of the week, a coalition of rebels and Jihadists including a former Al-Qaeda affiliate surrounded the only regime base in Eastern Ghouta, which lies east of Damascus and has been under a crippling regime siege since 2013.

The blockade has caused serious food and medicine shortages for the enclave’s estimated 400,000 inhabitants.

More than 340,000 people have been killed in Syria and millions displaced since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests.

Syrian army soldiers, supported by pro-government fighters from popular defence groups, have made fresh territorial gains against terrorists from the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, in the southern part of the country’s northwestern province of Idlib.

The media bureau of Syria’s Operations Command announced in a statement released on Saturday that government forces and their allies had managed to establish complete control over the villages of Khwein al-Kabir, Rasm Sham al-Hawa, Niha and Qaliat al-Tawibiyah in the Maarrat al-Nu’man district of the province in addition to Zarzur town following fierce clashes with the foreign-sponsored terrorists.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the skirmishes had been raging between members of the Takfiri Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorist alliance and the Syrian army on the outskirts of Vehicle Base in Harasta city.

The Britain-based monitor group added that Syrian government forces are yet to break the siege imposed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and Failaq al-Rahman terrorists on the key base. Vehicle Base is the largest military facility in the Eastern Ghouta suburb, and stretches from Harasta to Arbin town.

The base hosts a large number of soldiers, including Republican Guards, as well as big weapon depots.