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Syria Launches Deadly Airstrikes in Damascus Suburbs Dozens of Civilians Are Said to Be Killed by Syrian Airstrikes
(about 13 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government continued an intensifying campaign of airstrikes against rebels in the suburbs of Damascus on Monday, with sharply contrasting accounts of the effects: the government reported progress against “armed terrorists,” while antigovernment activists said that 15 children were among more than 30 people killed in the past two days. BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian warplanes have killed dozens of civilians, including more than 20 children, in an intensifying campaign of anti-insurgency airstrikes across the country over the past few days, bombing some targets as families were congregating outside to enjoy a sunny break from prolonged winter storms, activists and international medical aid workers said Monday.
A boy’s naked body, thickly coated in gray dust, lay prone amid rubble in a video that activists said was shot on Monday in Moadamiyeh, a suburb southwest of the capital, on a street echoing with high-pitched wails and crammed with cinder blocks from collapsed facades. In a room exposed by the blast, a woman could briefly be seen carrying the motionless body of a child. Their version of events was disputed by the Syrian government, which said through the official news agency that the airstrikes had made great progress against what it called armed terrorists fighting against President Bashar al-Assad.
A second video showed the bodies of half a dozen children laid out on blood-soaked blankets, including one curly-headed toddler of no more than 2. “Let the whole world observe, those are the victims,” a narrator said on the video. “Those are the ones Bashar al-Assad is fighting,” he added, referring to the Syrian president. The origins of the video could not be independently verified. But the activist accounts were buttressed, at least in one case, by an unusually detailed description from the group Doctors Without Borders, which has been operating quietly in Syrian areas near the Turkish border, where the insurgency is relatively entrenched.
The official SANA news service, however, said that airstrikes had killed scores of “armed terrorists” in the Damascus suburbs, including eight men it identified by name. “We could not keep silent,” Shinjiro Murata, the head of the Doctors Without Borders mission, said in a telephone interview from Aleppo Province. “We are sure that civilians were deliberately targeted.”
The government has mounted attacks for days to push rebels out of Daraya and neighboring Moadamiyeh, trying to increase the buffer zone around the nearby presidential palace and the neighborhood of Kafr Souseh, where some key security offices are. He said an aerial assault on Sunday, which hit an open-air market in the village of Azaz, near the Turkish border, left at least 20 people dead and wounded 99. The strike came as many people from around the region were shopping. “A sunny day,” he said. “Many children were out with their parents.”
The continued carnage is taking place against a backdrop of Syrian and international concern that the conflict could stretch out for months without a political settlement — and as Russia’s foreign minister urged the Syrian opposition to make a more serious effort to reach one by offering concrete proposals to the government. Other signs that children had died in government bomb strikes were seen in videos uploaded on the Internet, although they could not be independently corroborated. In one, a boy’s naked body, thickly coated in gray dust, lay prone amid rubble, in footage that activists said was shot on Monday in Moadamiyeh, a suburb southwest of the capital, Damascus, on a street echoing with high-pitched wails and crammed with cinder blocks from collapsed facades. In a room exposed by the blast, a woman could briefly be seen carrying the motionless body of a child.
Neither Mr. Assad nor his opponents have offered proposals that have any hope of being accepted by the other side. Mr. Assad refuses to talk to his armed opponents, and the opposition insists that Mr. Assad’s exit is a precondition for talks. A second video showed the bodies of half a dozen children laid out on blood-soaked blankets, including one curly-headed toddler no more than 2 years old. “Let the whole world observe, those are the victims,” a narrator said on the video. “Those are the ones Bashar al-Assad is fighting.”
The airstrike in Moadamiyeh on Monday killed at least 13 people, including five women and eight children, and rescuers were trying to recover more victims from beneath the rubble, according to the antigovernment Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The nearly two-year uprising has killed more than 60,000 people, according to United Nations estimates. It began as a peaceful movement for democratic reforms and became a civil war after the government fired on unarmed protesters. The official SANA news service said the Moadamiyeh explosion was caused by an insurgent mortar attack, not by government warplanes. It also said that airstrikes had killed scores of rebels around the country, including many it identified by name.
International groups have warned that the world is not responding sufficiently to Syria’s humanitarian crisis. The tally of children killed in airstrikes, according to activists, included seven children killed while playing outside in Hizza, east of Damascus, according to video that showed women weeping over their body parts; three in the northern city of Aleppo; two in an Aleppo suburb; four in Latamna, in Hama Province.
International humanitarian efforts need to be increased quickly to handle the unrelenting exodus of refugees from Syria, which has reached more than 600,000, as well as more than 2 million people displaced inside the country, the New York-based International Rescue Committee said in a report released Monday. In the Azaz attack on Sunday, Doctors Without Borders said 20 people were treated for injuries at its hospital in another town, since nearer hospitals had previously been bombed.
The committee urged nations to meet the United Nations’ call for $1.5 billion to help refugees. About 70 percent of Syrian refugees are living not in camps but dispersed in cities and towns, the report said, arguing that these “urban refugees” are “grossly underserved” because they are hard to locate and track. Desperate families end up without money for food, rent or medical care, leading women to join the sex trade and parents to sell daughters for early marriage or place children in exploitative jobs, the report said. The practice of destroying hospitals was corroborated by another humanitarian emergency organization, the New York-based International Rescue Committee, which said in a report on Monday that the Syrian authorities were engaged in “a systematic campaign” to hamper medical care through bombing and closing hospitals and intimidating, torturing and killing doctors who help the wounded.
International efforts must expand quickly to address the humanitarian crisis in Syria, the I.R.C. said in the report. More than 600,000 people have fled Syria, and more than two million people have been displaced inside the country, since the uprising against Mr. Assad began nearly two years ago.
The committee urged countries to meet the United Nations’ call for $1.5 billion to help needy Syrians. Its report said many desperate families end up without money for food, rent or medical care, leading women to join the sex trade and parents to sell daughters for early marriage or place children in exploitative jobs.
The report also emphasized a little-discussed issue, the threat of rape, which many families interviewed in Jordan and Lebanon cited as a primary reason for their flight.The report also emphasized a little-discussed issue, the threat of rape, which many families interviewed in Jordan and Lebanon cited as a primary reason for their flight.
“Many women and girls relayed accounts of being attacked in public or in their homes, primarily by armed men,” the report said. “These rapes, sometimes by multiple perpetrators, often occur in front of family members.”“Many women and girls relayed accounts of being attacked in public or in their homes, primarily by armed men,” the report said. “These rapes, sometimes by multiple perpetrators, often occur in front of family members.”
The report said that rape and sexual assault had been underreported because of social stigmas that could be directed at victims and their families. For those who remain inside Syria, the situation is equally dire, the report says. Many families have been displaced multiple times and have no access to schools or jobs. Sanitation services have halted in many areas, increasing the spread of disease, while the health care system has been effectively dismantled. For those who remain inside Syria, the situation is equally dire, the report says. Many families have been displaced multiple times and have no access to schools or jobs. Sanitation and health services have essentially been dismantled.
Quoting Syrian doctors, the International Rescue Committee said the government had engaged in “a systematic campaign to restrict access to lifesaving care through the strategic bombing and forced closure of medical facilities” and “intimidation, torture and the targeted killing of doctors in retribution for treating the wounded.” The carnage is taking place against a backdrop of rising concern that the conflict could stretch out for months without a political settlement. On Monday, Kofi Annan, the former Syria peace envoy for the Arab League and the United Nations who quit in August out of frustration, denounced what he called the absence of any concentrated international effort to end the conflict.
The aftermath of the airstrike in Moadamiyeh appeared grimly similar to that of an attack on Sunday that killed 19 people, including seven children, in Ghouta, east of the capital, the Observatory reported, adding that 10 rebels were killed in clashes around the suburbs. “There is a lack of leadership, lack of leadership in the international community,” he said during a visit to the United Nations. “We need leadership both from President Obama and from President Putin,” Mr. Annan said, referring to Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
In a newly sharpened appeal, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, declared on Sunday that the opposition should offer proposals for a settlement. The opposition condemned proposals set out by Mr. Assad in a rare public speech eight days ago, in which the president said he wanted to open a dialogue but only with those who had “not betrayed Syria.” Lakhdar Brahimi, the Algerian statesman who replaced Mr. Annan, is trying to push a political transition, but Mr. Annan said “he does not have the help that he needs.”
“If I were in the opposition’s shoes, I would come up with my ideas in response on how to establish a dialogue,” Mr. Lavrov said on Sunday, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. The danger of letting the situation fester without a political solution, he said, means “you are going to get into a situation where the stalemate will go on for a long time.”
Neither Mr. Assad nor his opponents have offered proposals that have any hope of acceptance by the other side. Mr. Assad refuses to talk to his armed opponents, and the opposition insists that Mr. Assad’s exit is a precondition for talks.
On Sunday, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia, which has consistently opposed efforts to unseat Mr. Assad by force, urged the Syrian opposition to make a more serious effort to reach a settlement by offering concrete proposals to the government.
“If I were in the opposition’s shoes, I would come up with my ideas in response on how to establish a dialogue,” Mr. Lavrov said.
“President Assad came out with initiatives aimed at inviting all opposition members to dialogue,” Mr. Lavrov said. “Yes, these initiatives probably do not go far enough. Probably they will not seem serious to some, but they are proposals.”“President Assad came out with initiatives aimed at inviting all opposition members to dialogue,” Mr. Lavrov said. “Yes, these initiatives probably do not go far enough. Probably they will not seem serious to some, but they are proposals.”
Russia, the most powerful ally of the Syrian government, reiterated over the weekend that neither Moscow nor the Syrians would accept Mr. Assad’s ouster as a precondition.

Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

“Our partners are convinced that President Bashar al-Assad must be removed from the political process as the precondition,” Mr. Lavrov said at a news conference in Ukraine on Sunday.
“This is a precondition that is not to be found in the Geneva communiqué, and which is unworkable,” he added, referring to the political framework agreed to in June in Geneva, which calls for the transfer of power to a transitional government and does not specify whether Mr. Assad could be part of that body.

Hania Mourtada contributed reporting.