Syrian regime bombing kills over 5000 in ten months

Syrian regime air raids have killed almost 5,500 civilians in the past ten months, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said.

A report released today by the monitoring group that documents casualties in Syria's five-year-long conflict shows that Syrian civilians have been subjected to over 33,000 regime air raids resulting in thousands of dead.

Among those killed in the bombardments have been 1,122 children and 775 women, while around 30,000 have been injured in the attacks.

Some of the hardest hit areas include Aleppo in northern Syria and Douma in the Damascus suburbs.

The neighbourhood has undergone a gruelling siege by the Syrian army, and been subject to continued air raids by barrel bombs and missiles.

Last Sunday, regime aircraft bombed the market in Douma killing over 100 civilians.

Damascus has suffering from a shortage of ordinance and the Syrian air force has been increasingly reliant on crude explosive devices to punish rebel areas.

This includes the use of barrel bombs - oil drums packed with explosives and shrapnel and dropped on civilian areas from helicopters.

The Syrian Observatory reported that Syrian government aircraft have dropped over 18,000 barrel bombs on rebel-held areas, resulting in enormous damage to homes and infrastructure.

Although the numbers can not be independently verified, human rights groups such as Amnesty International have documented the Syrian regime's indiscriminate bombing and shelling of civilian areas.

The UN also condemned the most recent bombing of punishing air raids on Douma.

The Syrian Observatory rely on a network of activists in the country to report casulaties and news in the Syrian conflict.