How Assad Keeps Getting Away With Massacres in Full View of the World

[TomSea]

How Assad Keeps Getting Away With Massacres in Full View of the World
Joshua Keating
The Slatest

 Bashar al-Assad’s regime is carrying out yet another massacre in full view of the world. The bombardment of Eastern Ghouta, an agricultural area of 400,000 people that is one of the last pockets of rebel-held territory near the Syrian capital, has killed at least 426 people, including at least 98 children, since Sunday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Assad government and its ally, Russia, claim to be targeting only military positions, and they blame the violence on rebels firing mortars into Damascus. But aid workers say army helicopters have been dropping barrel bombs—crude, indiscriminate weapons useful only for killing civilians—on marketplaces and medical facilities. Local insurgents also claim that Russian warplanes have been involved in the bombing, which Moscow denies.

Ghouta, under siege since 2013 and facing acute shortages of food and medicine, has already seen some of the worst suffering of the Syrian war, including the infamous 2013 chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds. With most residents now living in shelters with little access to food or medicine, conditions have become truly dire. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres* described it as “hell on earth” in a speech to the Security Council.

Read more at: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/how-assad-keeps-getting-away-with-massacres-in-full-view-of-the-world.html