The Jim Bakker Show

U.N. envoy urges Security Council to visit Myanmar, Bangladesh

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A top U.N. official recounted to the Security Council on Tuesday “heartbreaking and horrific accounts of sexual atrocities” by Myanmar soldiers against Rohingya Muslim women, urging the body to visit the region and demand an end to attacks on civilians.

Pramila Patten, special envoy of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on sexual violence in conflict, said one woman told her she was held by Myanmar troops for 45 days and raped repeatedly, while another woman could no longer see out of one eye after it was bitten by a soldier during a sexual assault.

“Some witnesses reported women and girls being tied to either a rock or a tree before multiple soldiers raped them to death,” Patten told the Security Council.

“Some women recounted how soldiers drowned babies in the village well. A few women told me how their own babies were allegedly thrown in the fire as they were dragged away by soldiers and gang raped,” she said.

Patten said the 15-member Security Council should visit Myanmar – also known as Burma – and Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, where more than 626,000 refugees have fled to since violence erupted in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State on Aug. 25.

She said that a Security Council resolution demanding an immediate end to violations against civilians in Rakhine state and outlining measures to hold the perpetrators accountable “would send an important signal.”

Myanmar’s army released a report last month denying all allegations of rapes and killings by security forces.

“This is unacceptable,” said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. “Burma must allow an independent, transparent and credible investigation into what has happened.”

“While we are hearing promises from the government of Burma, we need to see action,” she said.

Myanmar has been stung by international criticism for the way its security forces responded to Aug. 25 attacks by Rohingya militants on 30 security posts. Last month the Security Council urged the Myanmar government to “ensure no further excessive use of military force in Rakhine state.”

China’s Deputy U.N. Ambassador Wu Haitao said the crisis had to be solved through an agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh and warned that any solution “reached under strong pressure from outside may ease the situation temporarily but will leave negative after effects.”

The two countries signed an agreement on voluntary repatriation Nov. 23. U.N. political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman pushed on Tuesday for the United Nations to be involved in any operation to return Rohingya.

“Plans alone are not sufficient. We hope Myanmar will draw upon the wealth of expertise the U.N. can offer,” Feltman told the Security Council.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Tom Brown)

More than 8 million Yemenis ‘a step away from famine’: U.N.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Warring sides must let more aid get through to 8.4 million people who are “a step away from famine” in Yemen, a senior U.N. official said on Monday.

A Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi movement in Yemen’s civil war blockaded ports last month after a missile was fired toward Riyadh.

Jamie McGoldrick, the humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said the blockade has since been eased, but the situation remained dire.

“The continuing blockade of ports is limiting supplies of fuel, food and medicines; dramatically increasing the number of vulnerable people who need help,” McGoldrick said in a statement.

“The lives of millions of people, including 8.4 million Yemenis who are a step away from famine, hinge on our ability to continue our operations and to provide health, safe water, food, shelter and nutrition support,” he added.

That marked an increase from past U.N. estimates of around 8 million people on the brink of famine.

The coalition accuses Iran of sending weapons to its Houthi allies, including missile parts, through Yemen’s main Hodeidah port, were most food supplies enter.

Saudi state television said on Monday a U.N delegation of experts has arrived in Riyadh to meet the coalition and the Yemeni government the coalition supports “to prevent the transfer of weapons and rockets to Houthis”.

Iran has denied supplying the Houthis with weapons, saying the U.S. and Saudi allegations are “baseless and unfounded”.

The United Nations says food shortages caused by the warring parties blocking supplies has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Saudis intervened in neighboring Yemen in 2015 after the Houthis advanced on the southern port city of Aden and forced President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government into exile.

The conflict has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 2 million and triggered a cholera epidemic that has infected about 1 million people.

The U.S. government on Friday called on the Saudi-led military coalition to facilitate the free flow of humanitarian aid to all of Yemen’s ports and through Sana’a airport.

A senior State Department official told reporters in Geneva on Monday that the United States had provided nearly $638 million in humanitarian assistance to Yemen in the U.S. fiscal year 2017 that ended on Sept 30.

“We have called on both sides to stop the fighting and seek a political solution to the problem,” the official said.

He said the United States had made its position clear to its allies to end the blockade and called on the Houthis to allow access for humanitarian supplies as “there are shocking shortage of food, fuel and medicines that are causing great suffering”.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Writing by Reem Shamseddine and Sami Aboudi; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Alison Williams)

Morningside welcomes Congresswoman Michele Bachmann to The Jim Bakker Show

Morningside welcomes Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann to The Jim Bakker Show

By Kami Klein

On Tuesday, December 12, at noon, The Jim Bakker Show will be taping a special interview with former Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Currently Michele serves as the Executive Director of Skyline United Nations, a U.N. ministry seeking to bring a biblical perspective to the U.N. As a much needed voice for evangelical Christians standing with Israel, Congresswoman Bachmann will have much to tell on the President’s recent decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and her observations on United Nations leaders.

While speaking to the congregation of Skyline Church in San Diego California, Bachmann confirmed the challenges she will face as she attempts to shine God’s truth on the corruption now ingrained within this important international organization. “We are taking this unbelievably audacious step of going to the U.N.,” Bachmann shared, “I don’t know of a darker, more deceived place on Earth than the U.N.

Because Bachmann admits she’s never had any love for the United Nations as an organization, she experienced a lot of soul searching and prayer before deciding to accept the position. She has felt that policies that emanate from the global body, are mostly globalist and socialist in nature.

“Their goal has been from the very beginning the creation of a one-world order – not a one-world order under the umbrella of the Holy Spirit, but man’s attempt at a one-world order, that only brings about chaos, confusion, deception, delusion, pain. And that’s when, rather than cursing the darkness, Skyline Church is about to light a candle.”

We encourage you to be a part of this timely and informative interview with the former Congresswoman on Tuesday, December 12th at noon on Grace Street. If you are unable to attend please be sure to watch when the show airs on your station or on Jimbakkershow.com/video/. We hope to see you there!

Sources: WND article One News Now article Times of San Diego article

European states push U.S. for detailed Middle East peace proposals

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and Italy called on the United States on Friday to put forward detailed proposals for peace between Israel and the Palestinians and described as “unhelpful” a decision by President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Trump’s reversal of decades of U.S. policy on Wednesday sparked a Palestinian “day of rage” on Friday. Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated, scores were hurt and at least one was killed in clashes with Israeli troops.

Amid anger in the Arab world and concern among Washington’s Western allies, the United Nations Security Council met on Friday at the request of eight of the 15 members – Britain, France, Sweden, Bolivia, Uruguay, Italy, Senegal and Egypt.

In a joint statement after the meeting, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden and Italy said the U.S. decision, which includes plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, was “unhelpful in terms of prospects for peace in the region.”

“We stand ready to contribute to all credible efforts to restart the peace process, on the basis of internationally agreed parameters, leading to a two-State solution,” they said. “We encourage the U.S. Administration to now bring forward detailed proposals for an Israel-Palestinian settlement.”

Egypt’s U.N. Ambassador Amr Aboulatta said the U.S. decision would have “a grave, negative impact” on the peace process.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the Washington has credibility as a mediator with both Israel and the Palestinians and accused the United Nations of damaging rather than advancing peace prospects with unfair attacks on Israel.

“Israel will never be, and should never be, bullied into an agreement by the United Nations, or by any collection of countries that have proven their disregard for Israel’s security,” Haley said.

ESCALATION RISK

Haley said Trump was committed to the peace process and that the United States had not taken a position on Jerusalem’s borders or boundaries and was not advocating any changes to the arrangements at the holy sites.

“Our actions are intended to help advance the cause of peace,” she said. “We believe we might be closer to that goal than ever before.”

Earlier on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said during a news conference in Paris that any final decision on the status of Jerusalem would depend on negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

United Nations Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov warned there was a risk of violent escalation.

“There is a serious risk today that we may see a chain of unilateral actions, which can only push us further away from achieving our shared goal of peace,” Mladenov told the U.N. Security Council.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital. Palestinians want the eastern part of the city as the capital of a future independent state of their own.

Most countries consider East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed after capturing it in the 1967 Middle East War, to be occupied territory, including the Old City, home to sites considered holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike.

A U.N. Security Council resolution adopted in December last year “underlines that it will not recognize any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.”

That resolution was approved with 14 votes in favor and an abstention by former U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, which defied heavy pressure from long-time ally Israel and Trump, who was then president-elect, for Washington to wield its veto.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Frances Kerry and James Dalgleish)

U.N. warns against any hasty returns of Rohingya to Myanmar

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Peace and stability must be restored in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state before any Rohingyas can return from Bangladesh, under international standards on voluntary repatriation, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

Some 20,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar to Bangladesh in November, and at least 270 so far in December, bringing the total since violence erupted on August 25 to 646,000, according to the UNHCR and International Organization of Migration (IOM).

The two countries have signed an agreement on voluntary repatriation which refers to establishing a joint working group within three weeks of the Nov. 23 signing. UNHCR is not party to the pact or involved in the bilateral discussions for now.

“It is critical that the returns are not rushed or premature,” UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told a briefing. “People can’t be moving back in into conditions in Rakhine state that simply aren’t sustainable.”

Htin Lynn, Myanmar’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said on Tuesday that his government hoped returns would begin within two months. He was addressing the Human Rights Council, where the top U.N. rights official said that Myanmar’s security forces may be guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

The UNHCR has not been formally invited to join the working group, although its Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly Clements is holding talks in Bangladesh, Edwards said, adding that discussions were “still at a very preliminary stage”.

He could not say whether UNHCR was in talks with Myanmar authorities on its role, but hoped the agency would be part of the joint working group.

Edwards, asked whether the two-month time was premature, said: “The return timeline of course is something that we are going to have to look closely at … We don’t want to see returns happening either involuntarily or precipitously and before conditions are ready.”

In all, Bangladesh is hosting a total of more than 858,000 Rohingya, including previous waves, IOM figures show.

“We have had … a cycle of displacement from Rakhine state over many decades, of people being marginalized, of violence, of people fleeing and then people returning,” Edwards said.

“Now this cycle has to be broken, which means that we have to find a way to ensure that there is a lasting solution for these people.”

WFP spokeswoman Bettina Luescher said that it had distributed food to 32,000 people in northern Rakhine in November.

“Everybody agrees that the situation is very dire on ground, that all of the U.N. agencies need more access, that the violence has to stop and that these people can live in safety where they want to live,” she said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, editing by Larry King)

Exclusive: U.N. watchdogs call for probe of Taser assaults in U.S. jails

By Stephanie Nebehay and Jason Szep

GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. special rapporteur on torture urged U.S. authorities to investigate and weigh criminal charges against jail officials in Ohio, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Arkansas for the “clearly gratuitous infliction of severe pain and suffering” from the use of Tasers on inmates, citing a Reuters report this week.

After reviewing footage of jail incidents obtained by Reuters, Nils Melzer said the “grave abuse” from Taser use in some U.S. jails violated the United Nations’ prohibition on cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and, in some cases, amounted to torture. He cited video footage Reuters published of 22 incidents in four jails: in Franklin County, Ohio; Cheatham County, Tennessee; Franklin County, Arkansas; and McCurtain County, Oklahoma.

“In my view, all of the incidents shown in this video require independent investigation and most of them are likely to merit prosecution,” Melzer said in an interview. “Clearly gratuitous infliction of severe pain and suffering … constitutes a grave violation of human dignity and of the universal code of conduct for law enforcement officials.”

His criticisms were echoed by the head of the United Nations watchdog panel that monitors U.S. compliance with an anti-torture treaty, who said the cases documented by Reuters “need to be investigated thoroughly.”

In an article and accompanying video report published Wednesday, Reuters identified 104 cases of prisoners who died after being shocked with Tasers. Some of the in-custody deaths were deemed “multi-factorial,” with no single cause, and some were attributed to pre-existing health problems. But the Taser was listed as a cause or contributing factor in more than a quarter of the 84 inmate fatalities in which the news agency obtained cause-of-death findings.

Of the 104 inmates who died, just two were armed when shocked and nearly 80 percent hadn’t been convicted of a crime. A third were in handcuffs or other restraints when stunned. In more than two-thirds of the 70 cases in which Reuters was able to gather full details, the inmate already was immobilized when shocked – pinned to the ground or held by officers.

“When you use a tool like this on an incapacitated person, to me it certainly amounts to cruel and degrading treatment,” Melzer said.

Read the original Reuters investigation here https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-taser-jails/

The weapon’s manufacturer, Axon Enterprise Inc, said stun guns can help jailers and inmates avoid injuries when used properly. Axon issues guidance on proper use and warns of the risks associated with its weapons, but the company said it is up to local jail administrators to set their own policies on how and when the weapons are deployed.

“We do not condone torture of any kind,” Axon spokesman Steve Tuttle said in response to Melzer’s call for an investigation. “Our technology is designed to protect life and reduce harm to all parties involved during high risk, violent, and response-to-resistance situations.”

Melzer agreed Tasers “can be a justifiable tool for prison guards as an alternative to a gun to incapacitate a person who poses a threat.”

Melzer cited two of the 22 cases identified by Reuters to explain his belief that an investigation is warranted. One was the 2009 stunning of Martini Smith at the jail in Franklin County, Ohio. Previously unpublished video footage showed the Taser’s electrified darts striking the woman’s chest.

Smith, who was pregnant and lost her baby after being stunned, was one of nine inmates who filed a lawsuit against the county. Guards used Tasers at least 180 times from January 2008 to May 2010, often on prisoners posing “no threat,” the lawsuit contended.

In its own reviews, the sheriff’s office found no wrongdoing by guards and said the Taser use “did not constitute excessive force.”

“That looks like a case of torture,” Melzer said. “She was threatened she would be Tased if she didn’t comply with an order. It’s not that she physically resisted or would have been dangerous to the officer.”

The Smith footage was among dozens of videos Reuters examined of Taser incidents at the Ohio jail. Nineteen were featured in the Reuters video story. Melzer said they revealed “grave abuse.” No deputies at Franklin County have been charged.

The Franklin County Prosecutor’s office said the U.S. Department of Justice did not recommend criminal charges against jail officials when the DOJ intervened on behalf of inmates in the civil lawsuit stemming from the Taser incidents. The inmates’ lawyers also did not seek charges, it added.

Disability Rights Ohio, a nonprofit legal group representing the inmates in the class-action lawsuit against the Franklin County jail, however, said its role is not to seek charges.

“Disability Rights Ohio is not an enforcement agency and has no ability to pursue criminal investigations or charges,” said its director of advocacy, Kerstin Sjoberg-Witt.

Asked for comment, the DOJ said it was unable to immediately respond.

Melzer also cited footage Reuters obtained of deputies in a jail in Cheatham County, Tennessee, who repeatedly stunned 19-year-old Jordan Norris on November 5, 2016, while he was strapped to a restraint chair. That footage also was evidence of “torture,” Melzer said.

One deputy, Mark Bryant, was charged in September with four counts of aggravated assault and one count of official misconduct. Bryant has pleaded not guilty. Neither he nor his lawyers could be reached for comment.

Jens Modvig, chairman of the U.N. Committee against Torture, a panel of 10 independent experts, also said the incidents documented by Reuters represented “blatant abuse” that may violate laws. The United States, as a signatory to the U.N. Convention against Torture, is obligated to investigate the cases, he said.

“Once you introduce them,” Modvig said of stun guns, “it is difficult to avoid cases of misuse.”

(Szep reported from Washington. Additional reporting by Peter Eisler, Charles Levinson and Linda So. Editing by Ronnie Greene and Michael Williams.)

U.N. to assess if either side trying to ‘sabotage’ Syria talks

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – The mediator of U.N.-led Syrian peace talks in Geneva will assess next week whether either side is trying to sabotage the process, he said on Thursday, after President Bashar al-Assad’s negotiators said they would turn up five days late.

“We shall assess the behaviour of both sides, government and opposition, in Geneva,” U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said. “And based on that we will then decide how this… can be a building up or not, or a sabotage of Geneva.”

If either side were seen to be sabotaging the process it could have “a very bad impact on any other political attempt to have processes elsewhere,” he said.

He said the Geneva rounds of talks were the only peace process backed by the U.N. Security Council, although there were many other initiatives being planned.

He did not elaborate, but Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is seeking re-election next year, has suggested holding a “Syrian Congress” in the Russian city of Sochi early in 2018.

Diplomats see Putin’s plan as a bid to draw a line under the war after seven years of fighting and to celebrate Russia’s role as the power that tipped the balance of the war and became the key player in the peace process.

The Geneva talks have failed to build up any speed despite eight rounds of negotiations.

After months away from the U.N. talks, the two sides returned to Geneva at the end of November, with de Mistura hoping to discuss an agenda including constitutional and electoral reform.

But the government delegation arrived a day late and left after two days, saying the opposition had “mined the road” to the talks by insisting that Assad could not play any interim role in Syria’s political transition.

The delegation returned to Damascus to “consult and refresh”, but chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari initially threatened not to come back, which the opposition said would be “an embarrassment to Russia”.

De Mistura said on Thursday that Ja’afari’s delegation had confirmed it would return on Sunday, five days later than expected.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Hugh Lawson)

U.N. rights team warns Mexico of ‘crisis’ in journalists’ safety

By Daina Beth Solomon

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The United Nations said on Monday the Mexican government is struggling to keep journalists safe and prosecute their oppressors, after officials toured regions of the country that are among the most dangerous in the world for reporters.

Mexican federal prosecutors have yet to secure any convictions for crimes against reporters due to ineffective probes and scant resources, said the U.N.’s special rapporteur for freedom of expression, David Kaye, and his counterpart from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Edison Lanza.

They released a preliminary report describing a “profound crisis of safety” after a week-long tour of Mexico City and the violent states of Veracruz, Guerrero, Tamaulipas and Sinaloa, and plan to release detailed recommendations in the spring.

“Past prosecutors didn’t have the same political will to actually get the job done,” said Kaye, expressing cautious hope that current prosecutors will do more to address the problem.

“There’s a bit more attention to getting this done right. I hope what we heard wasn’t just words because we are here,” he added after the two met with 250 reporters on their trip.

A news photographer in the state of San Luis Potosi last October was the 11th journalist murdered so far this year, according to advocacy group Article 19, equaling the death toll in 2016, which was the bloodiest year for journalists on record in Mexico.

Murders are on track to reach a record high this year, as Mexico continues grappling with turf wars between violent drug gangs that have convulsed the country for more than a decade.

In the past 17 years, 111 journalists have been killed in Mexico, 38 of them under the administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Kaye said the prosecutor’s office tasked with investigating attacks on reporters, formed in 2006, needs to deter such crimes by committing substantial resources to solving a single high-profile case, or a handful of them.

“Until that happens, there will be very little prevention, and very little ending of this cycle of violence,” Kaye said.

He and Lanza also said Mexico’s government must devote more funding and staff to a journalist protection program launched in 2012, taking measures such as daily monitoring of the situation in states where reporters are most at risk, and helping them to continue to work if they are forced to leave their homes.

“It has an amount of money that’s absurdly insufficient for the emergency that it’s facing,” Lanza said.

(Editing by Dave Graham and Leslie Adler)

Myanmar forces may be guilty of genocide against Rohingya, U.N. says

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Myanmar’s security forces may be guilty of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority, the United Nations’ top human rights official said on Tuesday, adding that more were fleeing despite an agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh to send them home.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that none of the 626,000 Rohingya who have fled violence since August should be repatriated to Myanmar unless there was robust monitoring on the ground.

Myanmar’s ambassador Htin Lynn said that his government was working with Bangladesh to ensure returns of the displaced in about two months and “there will be no camps”.

Zeid, who has described the campaign in the past as a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing”, was addressing a special session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva called by Bangladesh.

He described “concordant reports of acts of appalling barbarity committed against the Rohingya, including deliberately burning people to death inside their homes, murders of children and adults; indiscriminate shooting of fleeing civilians; widespread rapes of women and girls, and the burning and destruction of houses, schools, markets and mosques.”

“Can anyone – can anyone – rule out that elements of genocide may be present?” he told the 47-member state forum.

Zeid urged the Council to recommend that the U.N. General Assembly establish a new mechanism “to assist individual criminal investigations of those responsible”.

Prosecutions for the violence and rapes against Rohingya by security forces or by civilians “appear extremely rare”, Zeid said.

Marzuki Darusman, head of an independent international fact-finding mission on Myanmar, said by video from Malaysia: “We will go where the evidence leads us…Our focus is on facts and circumstances of allegations in Myanmar as a whole since 2011.”

His team has interviewed Rohingya refugees including children in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh, who recounted “acts of extreme brutality” and “displayed signs of severe trauma”, he said.

Myanmar has not granted the investigators access to Rakhine, the northern state from which the Rohingya have fled, he said. “We maintain hope that it will be granted early in 2018.”

Pramila Patten, special representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, who interviewed survivors in Bangladesh in November, said: “I heard the most heart-breaking and horrific accounts of sexual atrocities reportedly committed in cold blood out of a lethal hatred of these people solely on the basis of their ethnicity and religion”.

Crimes included “rape, gang rape by multiple soldiers, forced public nudity and humiliation, and sexual slavery in military captivity”, Patten said.

Myanmar denies committing atrocities against the Rohingya. Its envoy Htin, referring to the accounts, said: “People will say what they wanted to believe and sometimes they will say what they were told to say.”

The United Nations defines genocide as acts intended to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. A U.N. convention requires all countries to act to halt genocide and to punish those responsible.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Peter Graff)

Syrian, Russian jets bomb residential areas in eastern Ghouta: witnesses, monitor

People are seen during shelling in the town of Hamoria, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, December 3,

By Suleiman Al-Khalidi

AMMAN (Reuters) – Jets believed to be Syrian and Russian struck heavily crowded residential areas in a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus, killing at least 27 people and injuring dozens in the third week of a stepped-up assault, residents, aid workers and a war monitor said on Monday.

Civil defense workers said at least 17 were killed in the town of Hamoriya in an aerial strike on a marketplace and nearby residential area after over nearly 30 strikes in the past 24 hours that struck several towns in the densely populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta.

Four other civilians were killed in the town of Arbin, while the rest came from strikes on Misraba and Harasta, the civil defense workers said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, said the casualties on Sunday were the biggest daily death toll since the stepped-up strikes began 20 days ago. The monitor said nearly 200 civilians were killed in strikes and shelling, including many women and children, during that period.

The Eastern Ghouta has been besieged by army troops since 2013 in an attempt to force the rebel enclave to submission.

The government has in recent months tightened the siege in what residents and aid workers have said is a deliberate use of starvation as a weapon of war, a charge the government denies.

The United Nations says about 400,00 civilians besieged in the region face “complete catastrophe” because aid deliveries by the Syrian government were blocked and hundreds of people who need urgent medical evacuation have not been allowed outside the enclave.

Eastern Ghouta is the last remaining large swathe of rebel-held area around Damascus that has not reached an evacuation deal to surrender weapons in return for allowing fighters to go to other rebel-held areas farther north.

“They are targeting civilians … a jet hit us there, no rebels or checkpoints,” Sadeq Ibrahim, a trader, said by phone in Hamoriya.

“May God take his revenge on the regime and Russia,” said Abdullah Khalil, another resident, who said he lost members of his family in the air strike on Arbin and was searching for survivors among the rubble.

A boy is seen during shelling in the town of Hamoria, eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, December 3, 2017. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

The intensified bombardment of Eastern Ghouta follows a rebel attack last month on an army complex in the heart of the region that the army had used to bomb nearby rebel-held areas.

Residents said, however, that the failure of the army to dislodge rebels from the complex had prompted what they believe were retaliatory indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the Eastern Ghouta.

Government advances since last year have forced people to flee deeper into its increasingly overcrowded towns. The loss of farmland is increasing pressure on scarce food supplies.

The Eastern Ghouta is part of several de-escalation zones that Russia has brokered with rebels across Syria that has freed the army to redeploy in areas where it can regain ground.

Rebels accuse the Syrian government and Russia of violating the zones and say they were meant as a charade to divert attention from the heavy daily bombing of civilian areas. The Syrian government and Russia deny their jets bomb civilians and insist they only strike militant hideouts.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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