At least 37 people have been killed and more than 200 injured after government war planes carried out air raids on Douma, the rebel-held suburb on the outskirts of Damascus, activists told Al Jazeera.
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The relatives of a Syrian man who had gone missing and was presumed killed after government forces shelled a market in his hometown of Douma last week were shocked and relieved to have him turn up at the family’s doorstep three days later, as a mourning period over his death had already begun.
We couldn’t reach them yet, because as you know the process of removing debris must be done with extreme caution, ‘ said Majd, an official from the Syrian civil defence corps, a group which operates in rebel-held areas.
His story was reported by the Eastern Ghouta branch of the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, a network of opposition activists.
On Sunday, regime attacks on Douma killed more than 100 people and sparked global condemnation of one of the bloodiest government attacks in Syria’s war.
Douma is located in Eastern Ghouta and is part of the Damascus suburb province.
In an absolutely horrific drive to undermine Syrian rebels at any cost, the regime of President Assad has launched a concerted and systematic campaign of airstrikes against hospitals in opposition-controlled territory, Mike Giglio and Munzer al-Awad report for BuzzFeed.
Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations to impose an arms embargo on the Syrian government after Sunday’s attacks, which the rights group said demonstrated the regime’s “appalling disregard for civilians”.
“It is natural for the Syrian government to use the appropriate tools to defeat terrorism”, he said. The besieged region is where a deadly chemical weapons attack, blamed on Assad’s forces, occurred exactly two years ago.
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The UN has said that some 250,000 people have been killed since 2011 and an estimated 7.6 million are internally displaced.
