East Ghouta Civil Defense on high alert after string of market bombings

AMMAN: The Outer Damascus Civil Defense raised the preparedness level for all personnel in East Ghouta on Wednesday amidst ongoing regime airstrikes on multiple towns one day after war planes bombed a crowded public market.

Fifteen civilians were killed and more than 60 injured when two regime air raids targeted a public market in the East Ghouta town of Ain Turma with vacuum missiles on Tuesday, Mahmoud Adam, a Civil Defense spokesman told Syria Direct on Wednesday.

“Regime forces committed a massacre against civilians in the city of Ain Turma in East Ghouta,” killing and injuring dozens, the Outer Damascus Civil Defense said in a statement on Tuesday.

The “systematic bombing of residential areas and public markets” has become “a regular occurrence” in the east Damascus suburbs, encircled by regime forces since June 2013, Adam said.

The attack came during peak hours, when the market was “very crowded with civilians buying and selling food from stands and shops,” Adam said.

 The aftermath of the first of two airstrikes on Ain Turma’s souq Tuesday. Photo courtesy of Ain Turma Media Office.

Approximately 70 markets in opposition-held towns across Syria have been targeted by regime bombardment in 2015, the pro-opposition Syrian Human Rights Committee reported Tuesday.

Syrian state media agency SANA reported “a precision strike on a den of terrorists” in Ain Turma on Tuesday, saying that at least one “Iraqi terrorist weapons expert” had been killed.

Junior reporter: