The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Government troops carried out a relentless five-day bombing campaign earlier this month that killed around 250 civilians in the enclave and wounded hundreds.
Around the same time, the monitor said, the regime began dispatching military reinforcements to Eastern Ghouta.
After days of relative calm, the government sent more than 260 rockets crashing into Eastern Ghouta on Sunday.
The regime is keen to regain control of Eastern Ghouta to halt the deadly salvo of rockets and mortars that rebels fire on Damascus.
The United Nations said Monday 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 in a statement.
About half a dozen rockets hit the capital 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.
– Regime to enter Afrin? –
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 told AFP.
More than 340,000 people have been killed since Syria’s conflict erupted in 2011 with protests against Assad’s government.
It has since evolved into a war that has carved up the country into rival zones of influence among the regime, rebels, jihadists 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.
Turkey sees the YPG as a “terror” group linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), outlawed by Ankara, and wants to clear it from its southern border.
The YPG has controlled Afrin since 2012, when Syrian troops withdrew from it and other Kurdish-majority areas.
Syrian state media said Monday that pro-regime forces were preparing to enter the area to “join the resistance against the Turkish aggression”.
