A child was killed and dozens more were wounded in rocket and artillery shelling by the Assad forces on the besieged eastern Ghouta in the Damascus suburbs.
The Assad regime has intensified aerial and artillery bombardment on towns and villages of eastern Ghouta since early November. The bombing campaign has so far killed and maimed scores of civilians as well as caused massive destruction to residential buildings.
Activists in eastern Ghouta said that Assad forces and their allied foreign militias on Friday launched a barrage of rockets and artillery shells on the towns of Douma, Zamalka, Ayn Tarma, Al-Asha’ari in eastern Ghouta. The shelling killed a child in the town of Arbeen and injured over 15 others.
Eastern Ghouta has been under suffocating siege by regime forces and their allied foreign militias for nearly five years. Civilians trapped inside, especially children, suffer severe shortages of food and medical supplies amid deteriorating health conditions in the rebel-held area.
Medical sources in the area warned that 195 children are threatened with imminent death from chronic diseases such as rickets, hepatitis, tuberculosis and lack of necessary vaccines.
The United Nations earlier called for the evacuation of more than 500 sick and wounded people from eastern Ghouta who need urgent medical care.
The United Nations’ requests for medical evacuations and humanitarian access were rejected by the Assad regime, which led to the death of at least 16 children due to lack of medical and food supplies. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
