New airstrikes hit Damascus suburb day after 45 were killed

Ahmad, an officer from the Douma branch of the Syrian Civil Defence department, told Al Jazeera that government air strikes and rocket barrages targeted Ghouta district in the Damascus suburbs.

The shelling targeted areas in the eastern countryside of Damascus, mainly the rebel stronghold of Douma, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

“The surface-to-surface rockets were fired by the regime, but we are not sure yet about the identity of the warplanes”, said Rami Abdel-Rahman, head of the Observatory.

A video published by opposition group SMO shows people carrying children away from the rubble and a man can be seen walking away from the debris with a small child.

The attack inflicted massive damage on a handful of residential areas and wounded 30 people, according to state broadcaster SANA.

“At least 35 civilians were killed in the attacks on Douma alone, another 250 have been injured”.

A local activist group in Douma shared photographs on Facebook of crumbling buildings and bloodied children lying in a makeshift clinic.

In one jarring photo, children’s shoes, notebooks, and bags are strewn across the blood-stained floor of what the group said was a schoolyard in Douma.

For their part, rebels reportedly killed at least three civilians, including a child, during mortar fire into government-held parts of Damascus.

Syrian warplanes carried out airstrikes on suspected rebel positions near Damascus in response.

Two more people were killed, and dozens wounded, in mortar fire on a Damascus suburb controlled by government forces, SANA reported.

The Islamist rebels who control Eastern Ghouta have regularly used human shields, mostly Shi’ites and other “enemies” locked in cages who are ferried around to likely targets, to inflate civilian tolls.