Eastern Ghouta is the last remaining rebel-held zone located near Damascus. The Syrian regime conducted air raids and artillery fire on the suburbs home to 400,000 people. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), approximately 300 people were injured by the bombing and at least 100 people, from which 20 were children, lost their lives.

The international community is extremely concerned by the escalation of violence and the danger Syrian citizens have been through in the past few weeks. The civilian losses are qualified as senseless suffering when the war against ISIS is supposed to come to an end. The attack that occurred in Eastern Ghouta is one of the deadliest for the district since it came under siege by the Assad regime in 2013. Eyewitnesses asserted that no distinction was made between relevant military objectives and civilian targets. The population fears of it becoming recurrent and shift into another Aleppo scenario with constant bombing and catastrophic humanitarian crisis.

As a result, the humanitarian convoys failed to reach their destination and could only help 2.6 percent of the 272,500 estimated people in critical need. Starvation and medicine shortages are making it difficult to take care of the wounded, and an increasing number of casualties is expected.

The United Nations called again for peace with an immediate and permanent ceasefire to end the battles to start reconstructing in this beginning of March. It is now time to stop hostilities to aid peacebuilding, and bring back stability in the region.

To know more, please read:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43121547
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/senseless-human-suffering-east-ghouta-180220064101130.html
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/02/21/russia-denies-role-deadly-air-strikes-syrias-eastern-ghouta.html