Syria govt bombardment kills 20 civilians near Damascus: Monitor

Mohammed Rayhan was assumed to be among more than 100 people killed when Syrian government forces bombed a market place in Douma, just north-east of Damascus, over the weekend in the single deadliest attack on the countryside town.

The United Nations Security Council should impose an arms embargo on the Syrian government following the government’s repeated air attacks on Douma’s popular markets and residential areas on August 16, 2015, Human Rights Watch said.

In a statement released on Saturday night, the Syrian Civil Defence organisation said airs raids on Douma over the past week have killed more than 200 people and wounded more than 400 others – mostly women and children.

Syria’s national news agency SANA said shelling by “terrorists” near Harasta had wounded four people.

Saturday’s strikes hit the city of Douma, a rebel-held area about 10 miles northeast of the capital, Damascus.

The Syrian forces fired artillery and shells as well as surface-to-surface missiles into the suburb of Douma, a main bastion for rebel groups in the Eastern Ghouta countryside of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. “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 defense corps, a group which operates in rebel-held areas. Such discrepancies are normal in the aftermath of chaotic strikes in Syria. It was not immediately clear how many civilians were among those killed in Saturday’s airstrikes.

Assad blames rebels for that attack.

The conflict has claimed more than 250,000 lives and displaced up to a third of Syria’s pre-war population.

Eastern Ghouta has been under a government siege for almost two years and is regularly targeted by regime aerial attacks. It includes talks on a political transition leading to democratic elections and how best to fight terrorism.