GHOUTA: Civilians continue to flee Syria’s Eastern Ghouta and Afrin in record numbers as Syrian and Turkish military operations continue against their respective foes.
Roughly 50,000 people have fled the two areas – 20,000 from Eastern Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, and 30,000 from Afrin, in Syria’s Kurdish-dominated northeast – according to some counts.
Eastern Ghouta has been at the centre of fighting between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad’s Russian-backed forces in recent days.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has said 46 civilians, including at least six children, were killed in air strikes in the Kafr Batna district on Friday morning.
The Russian defence ministry estimated that 2,000 people more people left Eastern Ghouta on Friday morning.
For his part, Bashar al-Jaafari, Syria’s ambassador to the UN, told the UN Security Council on Friday that more than 40,000 people were able to flee Eastern Ghouta the day before.
Jaafari’s estimate could not be independently verified.
Images posted online showed elderly women in wheelchairs and children carried by their parents as they walked amid the ruins of Eastern Ghouta.
The SOHR, a UK-based war monitor, said as many as 20,000 people have abandoned their homes, with many still waiting to be transported to safe zones.
Following nearly four weeks of relentless bombardment, which has left more than 1,250 civilians including children dead, government forces are inching closer to capturing the rest of Eastern Ghouta, forcing civilians to flee.
