16 killed in regime attacks in Damascus suburb: Sources

By Adham Kako and Levent Tok

EASTERN GHOUTA/ANKARA

The Syrian regime has conducted over 300 attacks within the last 24 hours in the besieged Eastern Ghouta district of Damascus, killing 16 people, including eight civilians, a local NGO reported Wednesday.

According to the Ghouta Media Center, which is run by local reporters in Eastern Ghouta, regime forces have carried out a total of 50 airstrikes in the area -- and more than 250 artillery barrages -- over the last 24 hours alone.

An Anadolu Agency correspondent based in Damascus, meanwhile, said the regime had continued to carry out attacks in nine separate districts of Eastern Ghouta since Tuesday.

"As a result of the ongoing attacks, at least 16 people have been killed -- including eight civilians -- and more than 100 injured," the media center said in a statement.

Roughly 400,000 civilian residents of Eastern Ghouta currently face the specter of starvation as a direct result of an ongoing regime blockade, which has led to severe shortages of both food and medicine.

Notably, Eastern Ghouta falls within a network of de-escalation zones in which acts of aggression are expressly forbidden.

Established earlier this year, the de-escalation zones were set up based on an agreement hammered out earlier between Turkey, Russia and Iran.

War-weary Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating civil war that began in 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in the fighting and more than 10 million displaced, according to claims by the UN.