Chaos deepens in Ghouta, global outcry grows: Russia tested ‘over 200 new weapons’ in Syria

MOSCOW: Russia has tested over 200 new types of arms in Syria during its campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad, a senior lawmaker said on Thursday, as Moscow was accused of taking part in air strikes against rebel-held Eastern Ghouta.

"As we helped the brotherly Syrian people, we tested over 200 new types of weapons," said Vladimir Shamanov, a former commander of Russia’s airborne troops who now serves as head of the Russian Duma’s defence committee.

"It’s not an accident that today they are coming to us from many directions to purchase our weapons, including countries that are not our allies," he said. "Today our military-industrial complex made our army look in a way we can be proud of," he said.

Russia, a close ally of the Syrian government in the protracted multi-front war, has been accused of indiscriminate bombing throughout the conflict causing massive casualties. The latest criticism focuses on the air strikes against the enclave of Eastern Ghouta, where more than 350 civilians have been killed in five days, but the Kremlin denied involvement in the regime-led assault.

Shamanov’s remarks also come amid reports that Russia has deployed its Su-57 stealth fighter prototype in Syria, where two such planes were reportedly spotted on Wednesday. Photos of the fifth generation jet, allegedly over Syria, were re-posted by various state media on Thursday.

A source in the defence ministry confirmed to RBK news agency that the two planes were sent to the Hmeimim base "for a test in real conditions".

Meanwhile, the Syrian regime rained rockets and bombs on Eastern Ghouta on Thursday, killing another 19 civilians as international pressure mounted to stop the carnage in the rebel-held enclave.

Calls for a humanitarian truce in one of the bloodiest episodes of Syria’s seven-year-old conflict went unheeded as the death toll for Damascus’s five-day blitz rose to 368. The United Nations chief said the bloodshed wreaked by the aerial campaign had turned Eastern Ghouta into "hell on earth", while German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for an end to the "massacre".

Residents huddled in basements as government forces pounded the besieged enclave with rockets and bombs, turning towns into fields of ruins and even hitting hospitals. According to Doctors Without Borders, 13 of the facilities it supports in Eastern Ghouta were damaged or destroyed in three days, leaving remaining staff with very little to save the hundreds of wounded brought to them every day. In the hospital mortuary in Douma, the main town in the enclave just east of Damascus, bodies wrapped in white shrouds were already lining up on the floor, two of them children.

Little pools of blood dotted the way to the hospital, where most of the victims of the sustained rocket fire unleashed by government troops on Thursday were taken. "The rocket fire hasn’t stopped this morning. Around 200 ground-to-ground rockets struck Douma alone," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"The killing of children, the destruction of hospitals -- all that amounts to a massacre that must be condemned and which must be countered with a clear no," Merkel said.