Russian jets kill 30 civilians in Syria
At least 30 civilians were killed early yesterday when jets dropped bombs on a residential area in a besieged rebel enclave east of Syria's capital, a war monitor said, identifying the planes as Russian.
At least four bombs flattened two buildings in the Eastern Ghouta town of Misraba, in an attack that killed around 20 and wounded more than 40 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and civil defence sources said.
Elsewhere in Eastern Ghouta, the last major rebel enclave near Damascus, at least ten people were killed in aerial strikes in other nearby towns, the Observatory, rescuers and residents said.
The Observatory, a war monitor based in Britain, said 11 women and a child were among the dead in the strikes in Misraba, which it said were carried out by Russian planes.
Backed by Russian strikes, government forces have escalated military operations against Eastern Ghouta in recent months, seeking to tighten a siege that residents and aid workers say is a deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war, a charge the government denies.
Russia rejects Syrian opposition and rights groups' accusations that its jets have been responsible for deaths of thousands of civilians since its major intervention two years ago that turned the tide in the country's nearly seven-year-old war in favour of President Bashar al-Assad.
Moscow says it only attacks hardline Islamists.
Video footage posted yesterday by activists on social media in Eastern Ghouta showed rescue workers pulling women and children from rubble. The footage could not be independently confirmed.
Jets also pounded Harasta, on the western edge of the enclave, where rebels this week besieged and overran a major military base which residents say the army uses to pound residential areas.
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