Aid groups warn situation in eastern Ghouta could unfold into worst atrocity of war so far 
 
 Almost 200 civilians have been killed in dozens of airstrikes and shelling by forces loyal to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in eastern Ghouta over two days of “hysterical violence”, which has led to warnings of a humanitarian catastrophe that could eclipse past atrocities in the seven-year war. 
 
 The surge in the killing in the besieged region came amid reports of an impending regime incursion into the area outside Damascus, which is home to 400,000 civilians. More than 700 people have been killed in three months, according to local counts, not including the deaths in the last week. 
 
 
 
 This is Eastern Ghouta, where hundreds are being killed and injured by Assad's forces Read more 
 
 Amnesty International said “flagrant war crimes” were being committed in eastern Ghouta on an “epic scale.” 
 
 
 
 Diana Semaan, the charity’s Syria researcher, said: “People have not only been suffering a cruel siege for the past six years, they are now trapped in a daily barrage of attacks that are deliberately killing and maiming them, and that constitute flagrant war crimes.” 
 
 Seven hospitals have also been bombed since Monday morning in eastern Ghouta, which was once the breadbasket of Damascus but has been under siege for years by the Assad government and subjected to devastating chemical attacks. Two hospitals suspended operations and one has been put out of service. 
 
 “We are standing before the massacre of the 21st century,” said a doctor in eastern Ghouta. “If the massacre of the 1990s was Srebrenica, and the massacres of the 1980s were Halabja and Sabra and Shatila, then eastern Ghouta is the massacre of this century right now.” 
 
 Quick guide What is happening in eastern Ghouta? Show Hide Where is it and why is it important? Eastern Ghouta is a rebel-held enclave that borders the city of Damascus. Once a breadbasket of the Syrian capital, since 2013 it has been under a siege that has tightened severely over the last year. In 2013 the area was targeted in a chemical attack by the Syrian regime that killed more than a thousand civilians and nearly prompted a US intervention in the war. Who controls it? The enclave is controlled by a mix of rebel groups dominated by the Islamist leaning Jaysh al-Islam, though the day-to-day affairs of the towns in the area are run by local civilian councils. How bad is the humanitarian situation? The situation is catastrophic for the 400,000 civilians who still live in eastern Ghouta. Prices for basic foodstuffs have skyrocketed and medical supplies are mostly absent because of the siege. Treating the injured is especially difficult because of the repeated bombing of hospitals and clinics. An estimated 700 civilians have been killed in the area in the last three months alone, not including those killed over the last week of escalation. The first aid convoy to the region in months arrived a week ago but did not do much to alleviate the suffering. Photograph: Hamza Al-Ajweh/AFP 
 
 He added: “A little while ago a child came to me who was blue in the face and barely breathing, his mouth filled with sand. I emptied it with my hands. I don’t think they had what we do in any of the medical textbooks. A wounded child breathing with lungs of sand. You get a child, a year old, that they saved from the rubble and is breathing sand, and you don’t know who he is. 
 
 “All these humanitarian and rights organisations, all that is nonsense. So is terrorism. What is a greater terrorism than killing civilians with all sorts of weapons? Is this a war? It’s not a war. It’s called a massacre.” 
 
 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Smoke rises from buildings following bombardment on the village of Mesraba in the rebel-held besieged eastern Ghouta region. Photograph: Hamza Al-Ajweh/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 The Syrian civil defense, a search and rescue organisation, said 61 people were killed on Tuesday alone, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, said 194 people had died in the last 48 hours– a toll that encapsulated the unbridled violence of the war in Syria. After seven years and interventions by regional and global powers, the humanitarian crisis has heightened instead of abating, as forces loyal to Assad’s regime and his Russian and Iranian backers seek an outright military victory instead of a negotiated political settlement. 
 
 Exact death tolls were difficult to obtain owing to ongoing rescue operations and because some families buried their dead without taking them to local hospitals. 
 
 Rebel groups responded with a wave of artillery bombardment targeting Damascus, killing 12 people and wounding 50 in government-controlled areas, according to the Observatory. 
 
 Aid workers said the latest violence in eastern Ghouta, where 1,300 people died in 2013 after the Assad regime deployed sarin gas, has included the use of notorious barrel bombs. The weapons are so inaccurate that their use is seen as a war crime by human rights watchdogs. The regime has also used fighter jets and artillery bombardment, on top of the punishing siege. 
 
 Eastern Ghouta is another Srebrenica, we are looking away again | Simon Tisdall Read more 
 
 “The situation in eastern Ghouta is akin to the day of judgment,” said Mounir Mustafa, the deputy director of the White Helmets, the volunteer group that rescues people from under the rubble of bombed buildings. 
 
 
 
 The White Helmets said one of its volunteers, Firas Juma, died on Monday while responding to a bombing. 
 
 In Geneva, the UN children’s fund issued a blank “statement” to express its outrage at the casualties among Syrian children, saying it had run out of words. 
 
 Medical organisations said at least five clinics and hospitals, including a maternity centre, were bombed on Monday, some of them multiple times. An anaesthetist was killed in the attacks. Another two facilities were hit on Tuesday. 
 
 “The bombing was hysterical,” said Ahmed al-Dbis, a security official at the Union of Medical and Relief Organisations (UOSSM), which runs dozens of hospitals in areas controlled by the opposition in Syria. “It is a humanitarian catastrophe in every sense of the word. The mass killing of people who do not have the most basic tenets of life.” 
 
 
 
 Mark Schnellbaecher, the Middle East director for the International Rescue Committee, said: “Once again we are seeing civilians in Syria being killed indiscriminately. Once again we are seeing medical facilities attacked. We have long feared eastern Ghouta will see a repeat of the terrible scenes observed by the world during the fall of east Aleppo and these fears seem to be well founded.” 
 
 Sonia Khush, an official with Save the Children, described the situation as “absolutely abhorrent.” 
 
 “The bombing has been relentless, and children are dying by the hour,” she said. “These families have nowhere left to run – they are boxed in and being pounded day and night.” 
 
 Elsewhere in Syria on Tuesday, pro-government fighters started entering the northern Kurdish enclave of Afrin, where Turkish troops have been on the offensive for a month. The development came a day after Turkey said it would hit back at the troops if their goal was to protect the Kurdish fighters. 
 
 Syrian state media said Turkish troops fired on the pro-government militiamen, a development that risks widening an already complicated war. ||||| Hammuriyeh, Syria: The United Nations (UN) has demanded an end to the targeting of civilians in Syria after a heavy bombardment killed 106 civilians, including at least 20 children, in rebel-held Eastern Ghouta, as regime forces appeared to be preparing for an imminent ground assault. 
 
 The escalation came as pro-government forces were also expected to enter the northern Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin, to take a stand against a month-old Turkish assault. 
 
 On Monday, 127 people died in the same area following attacks by regime forces. 
 
 Held by rebels 
 
 Held by rebels since 2012, Eastern Ghouta is the last opposition pocket around Damascus, and Bashar Al Assad has deployed reinforcements in an apparent concerted effort to retake it. 
 
 Ghouta’s fate is unknown. We’ve got nothing but God’s mercy and hiding out in our basements.” 
 
 - ALa’a Al Deen | Hammuriyeh town resident 
 
 
 
 As a barrage of air strikes, rocket fire and artillery slammed into several towns across Eastern Ghouta on Monday, the UN warned that the targeting of civilians in Eastern Ghouta “must stop now”. 
 
 “It’s imperative to end this senseless human suffering,” Panos Moumtzis, the UN’s Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syria Crisis, said. 
 
 The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 100 civilians, 20 of them children, were killed in the bombardment, the highest death toll in the enclave since early 2015. 
 
 “The regime is bombing Eastern Ghouta to pave the way for a ground offensive,” said Observatory head Rami Abdul Rahman. 
 
 UN children's agency says its outrage goes beyond words after more than 100 civilians die in Syrian regime attacks on Eastern Ghouta https://t.co/cvSWzkmf6c pic.twitter.com/I80ErXo96U — CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) February 20, 2018 
 
 The main opposition National Coalition, which is based in Turkey, denounced the “war of extermination” in Eastern Ghouta as well as the “international silence”. 
 
 It also accused regime ally Russia of seeking to “bury the political process” for a solution to the conflict. 
 
 Syrian boy Mohammad cries as he receives treatment at a makeshift hospital in Kafr Batna after being wounded with his mother in air strikes on the town of Jisreen in the besieged Eastern Ghouta region. 
 
 An AFP correspondent saw residents of Hammuriyeh rushing indoors in panic at the first sound of jets. 
 
 Alaa Al Deen, a 23-year-old Syrian in Hammuriyeh, said civilians were afraid of a potential government ground offensive. 
 
 “Ghouta’s fate is unknown. We’ve got nothing but God’s mercy and hiding out in our basements,” he said. 
 
 Shelling also hit the town of Douma, where an AFP correspondent saw five toddlers brought to a hospital, covered in dust and wailing uncontrollably. 
 
 The hospital was full of distraught civilians — one father slapped his forehead after finding his two dead children. 
 
 Most of Eastern Ghouta is held by two Islamist factions, while extremists control small pockets, including one directly adjacent to the capital. 
 
 The Observatory and Syrian daily newspaper Al Watan had said negotiations were under way for the evacuation of fighters from Eastern Ghouta. 
 
 260 
 
 rockets were fired into besieged Eastern Ghouta on Sunday 
 
 Wael Olwan, spokesman for the Failaq Al Rahman rebel group in Eastern Ghouta, said there had been heavy bombing throughout the day. 
 
 “There are no ground invasions in the field and clashes, but there is very big shelling and preparatory fire,” he said. 
 
 The United Nations said last week Syria was seeing some of the worst fighting of the war, which is entering its eighth year. Malnutrition has increased sharply in Eastern Ghouta with hardly any food aid reaching the residents, the UN office for humanitarian affairs (OCHA) says. 
 
 Rising violence reportedly pushed some 15,000 civilians to flee their homes last month, taking refuge in makeshift shelters or basements in the enclave, OCHA said. 
 
 But the escalating bombardment suggests the regime might opt for a ground assault instead, the monitor said. 
 
 Regime troops carried out a relentless five-day bombing campaign on the enclave earlier this month that killed around 250 civilians and wounded hundreds. 
 
 After days of relative calm, the government sent more than 260 rockets crashing into the enclave on Sunday. 
 
 The regime is keen to regain control of the area to halt deadly rebel rocket and mortar fire into Damascus. 
 
 About half a dozen rockets hit the capital on Sunday night, AFP correspondents said. State news agency SANA reported that one person was killed. 
 
 More than 20 civilians have been killed by rebel fire this month alone in regime-held Damascus. 
 
 All was quiet in the capital on Monday but since rumours of an imminent assault on Eastern Ghouta started spreading, people living close to the rebel enclave started packing their bags. 
 
 Jawad Al Obros, 30, said he was looking to move to a hotel in the western sector of the city to escape his home in an east Damascus neighbourhood that has been regularly hit by rockets from Ghouta. 
 
 “We’re tired of this situation. It seems that there’s no solution but a full-blown military one,” he said. 
 
 More than 400,000 people have been killed since the civil war erupted in 2011 after protests against Al Assad’s regime were brutally crushed. 
 
 It has since evolved into a war that has carved up the country into rival zones of control among the regime, rebels, extremists and Kurdish forces. 
 
 The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) control the northwestern region of Afrin, target of a month-old assault by the Turkish army and allied Syrian rebels. 
 
 Ankara sees the YPG as a “terror” group linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a deadly insurgency in southeastern Turkey since 1984. 
 
 The YPG has controlled Afrin since 2012, when Syrian troops withdrew from it and other Kurdish-majority areas. 
 
 Syrian state media said on Monday that pro-regime forces were preparing to enter the area to “join the resistance against the Turkish aggression”. 
 
 Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned against any intervention in support of the YPG, saying it would not prevent Ankara from pressing on with its offensive. 
 
 “If the regime is entering (Afrin) to oust the PKK, YPG, there is no problem. But if they are entering to protect the YPG, then no one can stop us and Turkish soldiers,” he said. ||||| This photo released on Tuesday Feb. 20, 2018 provided by the Syrian anti-government activist group Ghouta Media Center, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows... (Associated Press) 
 
 This photo released on Tuesday Feb. 20, 2018 provided by the Syrian anti-government activist group Ghouta Media Center, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows an injured Syrian man who was wounded by the shelling of the Syrian government forces, waits to receive... (Associated Press) 
 
 BEIRUT (AP) — Intense Syrian government shelling and airstrikes of rebel-held Damascus suburbs killed at least 98 people in what was the deadliest day in the area in three years, a monitoring group and paramedics said Tuesday. 
 
 A day after Monday's government barrage, retaliatory shells rained down on the capital Damascus, killing at least one person on Tuesday. 
 
 The targeted suburbs — scattered across an area known as eastern Ghouta — have been subjected to weeks-long bombardment that has killed and wounded hundreds of people. Opposition activists say government forces have brought in more reinforcements in recent days, suggesting a major assault is imminent to recapture the area that is the last main rebel stronghold near Damascus. 
 
 Monday's bombardment that killed nearly 100 people saw the use of warplanes, helicopter gunships, missiles as well as artillery, in a major escalation of violence near President Bashar Assad's seat of power. 
 
 The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was the deadliest days in eastern Ghouta since 2015, adding that 20 children and 15 women were among those killed. 
 
 The opposition-affiliated Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, said the shelling and airstrikes killed 98 and that some people are still under the rubble. It said the dead included one of the rescue group's members, Firas Jomaa. 
 
 Both the Observatory and the White Helmets reported more airstrikes and shelling on Tuesday in eastern Ghouta as rebels pounded Damascus with mortar shells. 
 
 Rebels retaliated by hitting some Damascus neighborhoods with mortar shells, killing one person and wounding six people, according to the state news agency SANA. On Tuesday morning, Damascus residents reported shelling on areas in central Damascus. 
 
 "Shells are falling like rain. We are hiding in the corridor," a Damascus resident told The Associated Press, asking that her name not be mentioned for her own safety. She spoke while hiding in the corridor of an office building. 
 
 Videos have surfaced from the eastern suburbs showing paramedics pulling out the injured from under the rubble while others are seen franticly digging through the debris in the dark, in search for survivors. 
 
 "The humanitarian situation of civilians in East Ghouta is spiraling out of control," said Panos Moumtzis, the U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for the Syria crisis, in a statement late Monday. 
 
 "It's imperative to end this senseless human suffering now. Such targeting of innocent civilians and infrastructure must stop now," he said. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press Writer Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.
– The name Eastern Ghouta may not be a familiar one, but the neighborhood near the Syrian capital of Damascus is now making international headlines for all the wrong reasons. The enclave of 22 communities happens to be the last opposition-controlled region near the capital, and it's been the target of fierce bombing by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On Monday, airstrikes and artillery shelling killed about 100 people, including 20 children, reports the AP, citing stats from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the civil defense group known as the White Helmets. The details: Assad's strategy: With the civil war now in its seventh year, Assad is looking to reclaim rebel-held territory through "an outright military victory instead of a negotiated settlement," per the Guardian. The bombardment could be paving the way for a ground assault against the two Islamist factions that control the neighborhood of about 350,000 people, reports Gulf News. One problem: This is a suburb with no international borders and thus is of little strategic value to world powers, explains the Washington Post. "As a result, there is no power broker such as Turkey, Russia or the United States to deploy ground troops or strike a backroom deal."