Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said: ‘This is a documented massacre’.
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Majid Khalaf, a spokesman for the Douma Civil Defense team, told VICE News that “11 bodies [were] still stuck in the rubble”, noting that “300 people had been injured and the death toll was likely to rise still further as rescuers continued to dig though the ruins”.
The U.N.’s humanitarian chief called attention Monday to the impact that the ongoing conflict in Syria is having on civilians in the country and the risk it poses to stability in the Middle East.
Doma and its surrounding have been constantly subjected to raids carried out by the regime’s forces.
The US state department has strongly condemned Syrian government airstrikes on the Douma suburb of Damascus and described Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as having “no legitimacy”.
Images posted on Twitter purported to show the aftermath of the airstrikes, including dozens of bodies wrapped in white sheets and laid on the ground.
A senior UN official, in a statement issued from Damascus, said attacks on civilians were “unlawful, unacceptable and must stop”.
The group said the worldwide community has failed to hold [the Assad regime] to account for its actions by executing the strikes while the UN Humanitarian Chief Coordinator Stephen O’Brien was in Damascus meeting with Assad’s officials.
Government air raids on Sunday killed almost 100 people in the eastern Damascus suburb of Douma, making it one of the deadliest such incidents since Syria’s crisis began in March 2011. O’Brien met Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and expressed a willingness to work with the government to alleviate humanitarian suffering, state media said.
The Syrian Revolution Network, an online network of activists with more than a million followers, tweeted: “50 markets bombed by Assad regime since the beginning of 2015”.
“By repeatedly bombing heavily populated areas in a series of direct, indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks as well as by unlawfully besieging civilians, Syrian government forces have committed war crimes and displayed a sinister callousness towards Eastern Ghouta’s civilians.”
In Syria, civilians have borne the brunt of the conflict.
“Hitting crowded civilian markets, killing nearly one hundred of its own citizens by a government is unacceptable in any circumstances”, Mistura said in a statement. The conflict has claimed more than 250,000 lives and displaced up to a third of Syria’s pre-war population.
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“This conflict – now in its fifth year – severely affects not only the lives of millions of people in Syria, but also continues to undermine the security of the region and beyond”, he added.
