Regime bombardment killed nearly 30 people in a rebel enclave near Damascus on Monday, as Syria\u2019s seven-year conflict left civilians paying a heavy price.<\/p>\n
Residents across several Syrian battlefronts have reported escalating bombardment and have accused Syrian troops of deploying toxic chemicals against<\/p>\n
rebel-held zones.<\/p>\n
The United States on Monday said there was \u201cobvious evidence\u201d of multiple chlorine gas attacks in recent weeks, including in the opposition-held enclave of<\/p>\n
Eastern Ghouta near Damascus.<\/p>\n
On Monday, dozens of air strikes and artillery fire battered Eastern Ghouta, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwenty-nine civilians were killed and dozens were wounded,\u201d said the war monitor\u2019s head, Rami Abdel Rahman.<\/p>\n
The deadliest raids on Monday hit a market in the town of Beit Sawa, killing 10 civilians including two children.<\/p>\n
Another nine civilians, two of them children and one a local rescue worker, were killed in Arbin.<\/p>\n
Eastern Ghouta is included in a de-escalation deal agreed last year by rebel ally Turkey and government supporters Iran and Russia.<\/p>\n
But violence has ramped up there in recent weeks, and this month alone, chlorine is suspected of having been used on two occasions in munitions launched by<\/p>\n
the regime on Eastern Ghouta.<\/p>\n
\u2018Multiple\u2019 chlorine<\/p>\n
A third accusation of toxic gas use came from Idlib, an opposition-controlled province in the country\u2019s northwest that also falls in a de-escalation zone.<\/p>\n
Nearly a dozen people were treated for breathing difficulties on Sunday after Syrian government raids on the town of Saraqeb, the Observatory said.<\/p>\n
Mohammad Ghaleb Tannari, a doctor in a nearby town, said his hospital had treated 11 people.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the cases we received had symptoms consistent with inhaling the toxic chlorine gas, including exhaustion, difficulty breathing, and coughing,\u201d he told AFP.<\/p>\n
The United States and Russia clashed at the UN Security Council on Monday over a push by Washington to condemn reported chlorine gas attacks in Syria.<\/p>\n
The US proposed a draft statement condemning the use of chemicals as a weapon, but Syrian government ally Russia added amendments that made no<\/p>\n
mention of the attack, according to a draft seen by AFP.<\/p>\n
In the end no statement was adopted.<\/p>\n
US ambassador Nikki Haley slammed Russia for balking at a statement that she described as a \u201csimple condemnation of Syrian children being suffocated by<\/p>\n
chlorine gas\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Russian ambassador Vassily Nebenzia hit back. \u201cIt\u2019s completely clear to us the goal is to basically accuse the Syrian government of chemical weapons use<\/p>\n
where no perpetrators have been identified,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The UN has found that Syria\u2019s government carried out chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015, and also used sarin against a town in Idlib last year.<\/p>\n
Syria\u2019s government has vehemently denied ever deploying chemical weapons in the country\u2019s seven-year war.<\/p>\n
Canadians released<\/p>\n
More than 340,000 people have been killed in Syria\u2019s conflict, which began with anti-government protests but morphed into an ugly civil war.<\/p>\n
Thousands of children are among the victims, and the UN\u2019s children agency on Monday decried yet another bloody month for Syria\u2019s children.<\/p>\n
UNICEF said at least 83 children were killed in conflicts across the Middle East in January, including 59 in Syria alone.<\/p>\n
In Arbin on Monday, an AFP correspondent saw the lifeless bodies of young children laid out on the floor in the local hospital.<\/p>\n
And in nearby Zamalka, another devastated Eastern Ghouta town, a man could be seen carrying the body of his child, wrapped in a blood-soaked white sheet,<\/p>\n
through the streets.<\/p>\n
In apparent retaliation for Monday\u2019s bombardment, rockets and mortars rained down on government-controlled districts of Damascus, Syria\u2019s state news agency<\/p>\n
SANA reported.<\/p>\n
One woman was killed and four people were wounded in mortar fire on the Bab Touma neighbourhood and the capital\u2019s Mariamite Cathedral, a Greek Orthodox<\/p>\n
church, a police source told the agency.<\/p>\n
Another person was killed in rocket fire on the regime-held part of Harasta district.<\/p>\n
Also on Monday, two Canadian citizens who were being held by jihadist factions in the country\u2019s northwest were released to Turkish authorities.<\/p>\n
Jolly Bimbachi and Sean Moore had crossed into Syria in December 2017 from Lebanon, where Bimbachi was fighting a custody battle for her two sons, she<\/p>\n
told AFP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Regime bombardment killed nearly 30 people in a rebel enclave near Damascus on Monday, as Syria\u2019s seven-year conflict left civilians paying a heavy price. Residents across several Syrian battlefronts have reported escalating bombardment and have accused Syrian troops of deploying toxic chemicals against rebel-held zones. The United States on Monday said there was \u201cobvious evidence\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21077"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21079,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21077\/revisions\/21079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}