An official in the Syrian Coalition said that the international community’s response the massacres being committed against civilians in eastern Ghouta “has been largely lukewarm and does not correspond with the size of the bloodshed in the Damascus suburb. He warned that these lukewarm positions risk encouraging the Assad regime and its allies to repeat the tragedy of Aleppo.
Member of the Coalition’s political committee Safwan Jandali said that “the positions and statements recently issued by European and UN officials in response to the recent developments in eastern Ghouta and which did not explicitly condemn the Assad regime “will fall short of stopping the killing of innocent civilians or deterring the murderous Assad regime.”
Jandali added that “these statements are of limited impact and does not correspond to the level of bloodshed in eastern Ghouta.” He called on the international community to take “more effective and urgent measures to force the Assad regime to stop its crimes.”
The EU’s High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini and Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Christos Stylianides called on the international community to unite to stop the human suffering in eastern Ghouta.
“The European Union calls on all parties to the conflict, as well as the guarantors of the four De-Escalation Areas, to take all necessary measures to ensure the decrease of violence, the protection of the Syrian people by respecting International Humanitarian Law, and urgent humanitarian access,” Stylianides said in a statement Monday.
“The recent escalation of violence compounds an already precarious humanitarian situation,” Panos Moumtzis, the UN’s regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The humanitarian situation of civilians in East Ghouta is spiraling out of control. It’s imperative to end this senseless human suffering now. Such targeting of innocent civilians and infrastructure must stop now.”
Deputy UN envoy to Syria Ramzi Ezzedine Ramzi warned that the continuation of fighting in Syria risks enabling terrorist groups to reorganize and re-mobilize their forces.
“Even in the ‘de-escalation zones’ we observe the continuation of heavy fighting,” Ramzi said, noting that around 1,000 civilians were killed during the first week of February alone.
Eastern Ghouta has been subjected to intensifying attacks by regime forces and their allies which compounded the suffering of civilians resulting from the siege imposed on the area for over five years. International watchdog groups confirmed that these attacks constitute war crimes. (Source: Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + Agencies)
