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Friday 17 November 2017

Assad’s air force just murdered three more White Helmets rescue volunteers

  • The UK can and should act to end Assad’s chemical, air, and artillery attacks against civilians.
  • The UK can and should deliver aid to besieged areas using airdrops.



Assad’s air force just murdered three more White Helmets rescue volunteers

Mohammed Alaya, Mohamed Haymour, and Ahmad Kaeika; three White Helmets rescue volunteers were deliberately killed today when Assad’s air force targeted Syria Civil Defence in Douma, a neighbourhood in the besieged Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus.

What’s happening in East Ghouta

Eastern Ghouta was one of the areas targeted by Assad’s August 2013 Sarin nerve agent attacks which killed between 1,200 and 1,700 people.

Since then, Eastern Ghouta has been under siege by the Assad regime.  Around 400,000 people have lived under air and artillery attacks, the blocking of food and medical aid, the blocking of medical evacuations, as well as an end to free movement and the blocking of all normal commercial traffic.

From late 2014, smuggling tunnels connected East Ghouta to opposition-held neighbourhoods Qaboun and Barzeh, but these areas fell to regime forces in early 2017. Today, bread in East Ghouta costs 11 times more than in nearby Damascus.

In October, shocking images of malnourished children emerged. Obeida, an infant, died on 21st October. Sahar, a girl 34 days old, died on 22nd October, due to an intestinal infection and related acute malnutrition. Three year old Mohammad Abd al-Salem died on 27th October.

UNICEF estimate more than 1,100 children are suffering from acute malnutrition.


Not only does the Assad regime block food and medicine from going in, it blocks the sick from getting out for treatment. Seven people died since August 2017 waiting for regime permission for medical evacuation, permission that never came.

Some UN aid convoys have been allowed in by the regime in the face of international outcry, but only a fraction of what is needed. One UN aid convoy on 30 October had food intended for 40,000, about a tenth of Eastern Ghouta’s population. The load of 8,000 food parcels lasted little over a week. A second one on 12 November reportedly carried an even smaller amount of food, 4,300 food baskets for 25,000 families.

Starvation doesn’t kill fast enough for Assad

Eastern Ghouta is supposed to be a de-escalation zone according to a deal between Russia, Turkey, and Iran. Russia announced the signing of a ceasefire agreement with rebels in July, and publicised the deployment of Russian military police to checkpoints in Ghouta. But Assad kept on bombing.

On 31 October, up to eight children were killed and others were injured when two schools in Eastern Ghouta were shelled: the Nasser Ash’osh elementary school in Jisreen, and the Shahid Soheil at-Taklah School in Mesraba.

The attack came the day after the UN had delivered aid. Photographs showed UNICEF schoolbags with the dead children.

Every day for the past week air and artillery attacks have struck across Eastern Ghouta, killing adults and children. And every day White Helmets rescue volunteers have rushed to the scene of each attack to save as many lives as they can. Today three of them lost their own lives in that effort.

What can the UK do?

The UK has turned its back on Eastern Ghouta before.

After Assad’s 2013 chemical attack killed many hundreds of people in their homes in Eastern Ghouta, the government put a motion to Parliament deploring the attack, and proposing that military action ‘that is legal, proportionate and focused on saving lives by preventing and deterring further use of Syria’s chemical weapons’ might be necessary.

The 2013 motion committed to seeking a UN Security Council resolution in response to the attack, and committed to a further vote in Parliament before any UK military action could take place. But despite focus on saving lives, and despite the safeguard promising a further vote before any action, most Labour MPs along with many Conservative backbench MPs voted down the motion.

In 2017 Assad has carried on using chemical weapons. His forces used Sarin at least twice this year, and have reportedly used chlorine bombs many more times this year, including in Eastern Ghouta. And now Russia has vetoed the UN-OPCW joint investigation into chemical attacks, closing any UN route to stopping them.

The UK at several points held out the hope of airdrops of aid to besieged areas, but it has never followed through. Last year it promised airdrops if Assad didn’t allow full humanitarian access by 1st June. For a brief period, the threat of airdrops led to the regime allowing greater ground access. But when the UN wouldn’t make good on the UK’s airdrops promise, the UK failed to follow through with aid airdrops of its own.

As recently as February, the Secretary of State for International Development told the House of Commons that the Government was considering the possibility of using drones to deliver aid directly. But no action followed.

Civilians in Eastern Ghouta don’t want a drip-feed of aid, whether by ground or by air—they want an end to the siege. But that will only happen under sustained international pressure—and that means pressure of action not words.

By now, nobody believes the word of the UK on airdrops any more than they believe Assad on chemical weapons or believe Russia on ceasefire deals.

Today in Syria, only action speaks.

The UK can and should act to end Assad’s chemical, air, and artillery attacks against civilians: Deter attacks by means of retaliatory strikes against Assad regime military assets.

The UK can and should deliver aid to besieged areas using airdrops either by manned or unmanned systems, and threaten military retaliation against any party interfering with UK flights.