dagblog - Comments for "The war on children in Syria: Reports of mass casualties among children in Eastern Ghouta and Damascus"

U.N. Links North Korea to

artappraiser — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 08:16:34 +0000

In reply to The war on children in Syria: Reports of mass casualties among children in Eastern Ghouta and Damascus

U.N. Links North Korea to Syria’s Chemical Weapons Program

By Michael Schwirtz @ NYTimes.com, Feb. 27

UNITED NATIONS — North Korea has been shipping supplies to the Syrian government that could be used in the production of chemical weapons, United Nations experts contend.

The evidence of a North Korean connection comes as the United States and other countries have accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons on civilians, including recent attacks on civilians in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta using what appears to have been chlorine gas.

The supplies from North Korea include acid-resistant tiles, valves and thermometers, according to a report by United Nations investigators. North Korean missile technicians have also been spotted working at known chemical weapons and missile facilities inside Syria, according to the report, which was written by a panel of experts who looked at North Korea’s compliance with United Nations sanctions.

The report highlights the potential danger posed by any such trade between Syria and North Korea, which could allow Syria to maintain its chemical weapons while also providing North Korea with cash for its nuclear and missile programs.

The possible chemical weapons components were part of at least 40 previously unreported shipments by North Korea to Syria between 2012 and 2017 of prohibited ballistic missile parts and materials that could be used for both military and civilian purposes, according to the report, which has not been publicly released but which was reviewed by The New York Times [....]

Russia blocks UN resolution

artappraiser — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 10:07:11 +0000

In reply to The war on children in Syria: Reports of mass casualties among children in Eastern Ghouta and Damascus

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 [....]

Syria war: UN (Sec. Gen.)

artappraiser — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 00:22:04 +0000

In reply to The war on children in Syria: Reports of mass casualties among children in Eastern Ghouta and Damascus

Syria war: UN (Sec. Gen.) plea to end 'hell on earth' Eastern Ghouta crisis

@ BBC News, 3 hrs. ago

The UN Secretary General has demanded an immediate end to fighting in the Eastern Ghouta in Syria, describing the rebel enclave as a "hell on earth".

"I believe Eastern Ghouta cannot wait," Antonio Guterres told the UN Security Council on Wednesday [....]

At least 200 dead in Syrian

artappraiser — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 05:22:04 +0000

In reply to The war on children in Syria: Reports of mass casualties among children in Eastern Ghouta and Damascus

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

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

Injured children are treated at a hospital in rebel-held
Douma, in Eastern Ghouta, Syria, on Feb. 19.
(Mohammed Badra/European Pressphoto
Agency-Efe/Shutterstock)

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

One of the heaviest bombardments in years has killed 200 people,
many of them civilians, at a rebel-held enclave near Damascus.
Abdulmonam Eassa/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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 [....]

'It's not a war. It's a

artappraiser — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 05:05:05 +0000

In reply to The war on children in Syria: Reports of mass casualties among children in Eastern Ghouta and Damascus

'It's not a war. It's a massacre': scores killed in Syrian enclave

Aid groups warn situation in eastern Ghouta could unfold into worst atrocity of war so far

By Kareem Shaeen in Istanbul @ TheGuardian.com, Feb. 20

Almost 200 civilians have been killed in dozens of airstrikes and shelling by forces loyal to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in eastern Ghouta over two days of “hysterical violence”, which has led to warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe that could eclipse past atrocities in the seven-year war.

The surge in the killing in the besieged region came amid reports of an impending regime incursion into the area outside Damascus, which is home to 400,000 civilians [....]

Amnesty International said “flagrant war crimes” were being committed in eastern Ghouta on an “epic scale.”

Diana Semaan, the charity’s Syria researcher, said: “People have not only been suffering a cruel siege for the past six years, they are now trapped in a daily barrage of attacks that are deliberately killing and maiming them, and that constitute flagrant war crimes.”

Seven hospitals have also been bombed since Monday morning in eastern Ghouta [....]

“We are standing before the massacre of the 21st century,” said a doctor in eastern Ghouta. “If the massacre of the 1990s was Srebrenica, and the massacres of the 1980s were Halabja and Sabra and Shatila, then eastern Ghouta is the massacre of this century right now [....]