JEDDAH: The world’s silence regarding atrocities committed by Damascus and Moscow is killing Syrians, opposition spokesman Yahya Al-Aridi said Thursday.
He was reacting to reports that at least 30 civilians were killed Thursday when Russian jets bombed a residential area in a besieged opposition-held enclave of Damascus.
“This stain of shame has been on the world’s forehead for seven continuous, painful years,” he told Arab News.
At least four bombs flattened two buildings in the Eastern Ghouta town of Misraba, killing around 20 people and wounding more than 40, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters.
Elsewhere in Eastern Ghouta, the last major opposition-held enclave in Damascus, at least 10 people were killed by airstrikes in other towns, rescuers and residents said.
Video footage posted by activists on social media showed rescue workers pulling women and children from rubble.
“If Russia’s actions aren’t war crimes, what can they be called?” said Al-Aridi. “Russia has used its UN Security Council veto 11 times to protect the criminal Assad regime, because Russia itself is perpetrating war crimes in Syria.”
A Syrian opposition delegation “will head to the UN soon” to discuss the issue with the secretary-general and see what the Security Council and the world in general can do about it, Al-Aridi added.
Regime forces on Thursday battled to reach troops trapped in Eastern Ghouta, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
State television said army units had launched an assault to break the siege of the Armoured Vehicle Base, where some 250 soldiers are believed to be cut off.
Opposition: World’s silence is killing Syrians
Opposition: World’s silence is killing Syrians
Helicopter crashes in Libya during medical evacuation, killing 3
- The Matan Al-Sarra air base lies in an area under the control of Libya’s Benghazi-based eastern administration led by military strongman Khalifa Haftar, but authorities in the east did not comment on the crash
TRIPOLI: A helicopter has crashed in southeastern Libya, killing a medic and two crew members carrying out a medical evacuation, state media said Tuesday.
Libyan news agency LANA said the chopper went down overnight near an air base in the Kufra region about 60 kilometers north of the border between Libya and Chad.
The aircraft was attempting to evacuate a soldier who had been involved in a road accident in the desert, LANA said.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known and it was unclear what happened to the injured soldier.
Libyan media reports said two foreign nationals were among those on board who were killed, but this was not confirmed by authorities.
The Matan Al-Sarra air base lies in an area under the control of Libya’s Benghazi-based eastern administration led by military strongman Khalifa Haftar, but authorities in the east did not comment on the crash.
Libya remains split between the eastern administration and a UN-backed government in the west led by Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah. The LANA news agency is under the control of western authorities.
Libya has struggled to recover from chaos that erupted following a 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled and killed longtime ruler Muammar Qaddafi.
