Assad regime siege on Eastern Ghouta region of Syrian capital Damascus has
killed 227 babies this year, according to data from local hospitals. The new
toll takes to 527 the number of babies who died of malnutrition caused by the
regime blockade in the region since 2014. A main opposition stronghold on the
outskirts of Damascus, Eastern Ghouta has been under siege by regime forces
since December 2012.
The attacks and blockade have left the area's 400,000 residents struggling
with malnutrition and all healthcare facilities non-operational.
According to data from local hospitals, only 15 babies breathed their last in
Eastern Ghouta in 2014. The death toll of babies, however, jumped to 112 in
2015 and to 173 a year later.
Last month, Sehar Difda, a one-month old baby, was the last to have died of
malnutrition in Eastern Ghouta.
According to activists, thousands of Syrian babies in Eastern Ghouta are at
the risk of death as the Syrian regime tightened up its blockade in recent
months, preventing residents from bringing in their daily needs through
tunnels or intermediary merchants. Eastern Ghouta falls within a network of
de-escalation zones -- set up in Syria by Turkey, Russia and Iran -- in which
acts of aggression are expressly forbidden.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar
al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected
ferocity. Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and
more than 10 million displaced, according to U.N. officials.
UN urges evacuation of civilians in Syria's Eastern Ghouta
Some 400 civilians are in urgent need of medical evacuation from Syria's
Eastern Ghouta region, including 29 who will die if they are not allowed to
leave immediately, the United Nations warned yesterday, as reported by AFP.
"Around 400 men, women, children... need to be evacuated now," Jan Egeland,
head of the U.N.'s humanitarian taskforce for Syria, told reporters in Geneva,
adding that 29 of them, including 18 children "will die if they are not
evacuated."
The four-year siege on Eastern Ghouta has led to the deaths of as many as 397
civilians, including 206 children and 67 women, due to a lack of food and
medical supplies, Anadolu Agency (AA) reported. Meanwhile, the Syrian army and
its allies have taken Albu Kamal, Daesh's last major stronghold in Syria,
representing the end of Daesh's project in the region, the army general
command said yesterday. The army said it is now fighting the last remaining
Daesh pockets in the country's eastern desert, an army statement said.
"The liberation of Albu Kamal city is very important because it signals the
general fall of the terrorist Daesh organization's project in the region," a
statement from the general command said, according to Reuters. Alongside
Lebanon's Hezbollah and other Shi'ite militias, and backed by Iran and Russia,
the Syrian army has recently seized swathes of land from Daesh. Albu Kamal, on
the Euphrates River, is located in Syria's eastern Deir ez-Zor province on the
Iraqi border.
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