At least 200 dead in Syrian government airstrikes as the war ramps up

By Liz Sly & Louise Loveluck @ WashingtonPost.com, Feb. 20

BEIRUT — A surge in Syrian government airstrikes has killed at least 200 people over the past two days on the outskirts of Damascus, aid agencies said Tuesday, as the Syrian war ramps up and civilians again pay the price for the failure of international efforts to resolve it.

The bloodshed marked one of the deadliest episodes in the ­seven-year war, aid agencies and human rights monitors said, as nightfall brought more waves of bombing against the cluster of towns and villages known as Eastern Ghouta, one of the largest areas still under rebel control.

Residents said they had been cowering in their basements since Sunday as squadrons of fighter jets circled over their neighborhoods, taking turns bombing. When the jets run low on fuel, they are replaced by more planes, sustaining a continuous roar of aircraft punctuated by explosions, said Firas Abdullah, an activist with the Ghouta Media Center [.....]

Helicopters joined the warplanes, dropping crude devices known as barrel bombs crammed with nails and metal to make them more lethal, he said. “The situation here was always bad, but this is the worst we have ever seen,” Abdullah said.

Syrian forces continue bloody offensive in East Ghouta

'Catastrophic' bombardment by Syrian air strikes and artillery fire kills 250 people over the past two days.

@ AlJazeera.com, 8 hrs. ago

Deadly air strikes and artillery fire continued on Tuesday with more than 100 people in Syria's Eastern Ghouta enclave killed, bringing the number of civilian deaths to 250 over the last 48 hours, a war monitor reported.

It was the highest two-day death toll since a 2013 chemical attack on the besieged enclave, which killed hundreds, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The UK-based war monitor said 106 people had been killed by bombardment on Tuesday [....]

Syrian Bombardment Takes Its Deadliest Toll in Years

By Anne Barnard & Carlotta Gall @ NYTimes.com, Feb. 20

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government, seizing on a chance to reclaim territory lost in its ever-escalating civil war, has loosed a devastating bombardment on a rebel-held Damascus suburb, killing at least 200 people, many of them children, aid workers said Tuesday.

Syrian officials vowed to show no quarter as they moved to wipe out rebels in the suburb of eastern Ghouta, with the assault this week ranking as the deadliest there in years.

“I promise, I will teach them a lesson, in combat and in fire,” Brig. Gen. Suheil al-Hassan, leader of the government’s Tiger Force, said in a videoshared by pro-government social media accounts. “You won’t find a rescuer. And if you do, you will be rescued with water like boiling oil. You’ll be rescued with blood.”

Residents and emergency medical workers in eastern Ghouta posted a cascade of heart-rending images: a family with five children pulled dead from the rubble; families huddled in basements and dugout shelters; an ambulance crew loading a patient, then fleeing moments before an explosion hits [....]

Russia blocks UN resolution on eastern Ghouta ceasefire

Reports of civilian casualties in Syrian rebel enclave are ‘mass psychosis’, envoy claims

By Julian Borger @ TheGuardian.com, Feb.22

Russia has blocked a UN resolution that would have established a 30-day ceasefire and humanitarian deliveries in eastern Ghouta, saying that widespread reporting of heavy civilian casualties in the besieged area on the edge of the Syrian capital, Damascus, was a product of “mass psychosis”.

The Russian envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, told an emergency meeting of the security council on the situation in eastern Ghouta that Russia would not support the ceasefire resolution put forward by Sweden and Kuwait in its present form, calling it unrealistic.

He circulated a list of proposed Russian amendments, thought to involve opening broad loopholes in the ceasefire, allowing a range of rebel groups to be targeted. A western diplomat said that at first glance the Russian amendments were “likely to be unacceptable”. Diplomats said the resolution could go to a vote on Friday.

Moscow has vetoed 10 previous UN resolutions on Syria and has consistently used its permanent seat on the security council to shield the Syrian president [....]