Air Strikes Near Damascus Jill 32, Including 6 Children: NGO

Beirut (Antara/AFP) - Government air strikes on a rebel-held village east of Damascus Friday killed 32 civilians, including six children, a monitoring group said, denouncing what it called a massacre. "The number of people killed in a massacre committed by the regime's warplanes against the village of Hammuriyeh, in the Eastern Ghouta area, has risen to 32, including six children," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "The toll may continue to rise, as there are several critically injured people," the Britain-based group added. According to the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), a grassroots network of opponents, one of the strikes hit a square in Hammuriyeh where people had gathered for the weekly Muslim Friday prayer. Syria's air force began launching strikes against opposition-held areas in the summer of 2012, with rights groups blasting the regime for attacks they say fail to discriminate between civilian and military targets. The rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area, located east of Damascus, has been under a suffocating army siege for more than a year, leaving tens of thousands of civilians short of food and medical supplies.(*)