At least 200 dead in Syrian government airstrikes as the war ramps up

The latest surge of violence is part of what appears to be a fresh government push to recapture the Eastern Ghouta area, which has been under the control of rebels since 2012 and besieged by government forces since 2013. Spanning 142 square miles, it is populated by more than 350,000 people.

Over the weekend, pro-government social media accounts posted photographs of columns of armored vehicles and trucks carrying fighters from the renowned loyalist Tiger militia and converging at the front lines around Eastern Ghouta, triggering speculation that an offensive was imminent.

The airstrikes began with a vengeance overnight Sunday, sending residents scurrying for cover. Opposition activists and journalists began posting photographs of the victims, many of them children. One showed the bodies of four children laid out in white shrouds, splashed with red blood and flanked by the bodies of three adults — apparently a family that had died together. Another photograph, circulated by activists Monday, appeared to show the bodies of five members of a family, the children wrapped in their dressing gowns, one of them cuddling a dead woman who may have been their mother.

“What’s the goal? Is it to crush Ghouta on the heads of everyone like they crushed Aleppo?” asked Osama Nasser, a veteran anti-

government activist who said he and his family had not left their basement since Sunday.

The rebels have hit back, firing more than 45 mortar shells and rockets into Damascus, killing six people and injuring 29, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA.

The Syrian government sent a letter to the United Nations accusing Western nations of responsibility for the attacks, because of the support that Western governments have given to rebels in the past, the agency said. The Syrian government urged the United Nations to condemn Western governments “as they are denying the Syrian state’s right to defend its citizens, fight terrorism, and confront those who fund and arm terrorists,” SANA said.

The United Nations repeated its appeal for a cease-fire on all sides, focusing its call on halting government attacks against Eastern Ghouta.

“The humanitarian situation of civilians in East Ghouta is spiraling out of control,” the U.N. regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Panos Moumtzis, said in a statement. “It’s imperative to end this senseless human suffering now. Such targeting of innocent civilians and infrastructure must stop now.”

The U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, issued a statement that consisted of a blank page. “We no longer have the words to describe children’s suffering and our outrage,” the agency added in a footnote, by way of explanation.

Western aid agencies, which have been unable to operate inside Syria for years because of government restrictions but have partner arrangements with local aid agencies, echoed the calls for a cease-fire.

“The extreme escalation in violence has made it impossible for humanitarian agencies to reach the hundreds of thousands of vulnerable civilians trapped in Eastern Ghouta. Civilians are deprived of food and medicine and are facing hunger and death. If a cease-fire is not reached now, we will be facing a humanitarian catastrophe,” said Wouter Schaap, CARE’s country director for Syria.