Child killed after Assad forces open fire on Douma's displaced in 'retaliation' to Western strikes

Syrian regime militiamen opened fire on a convoy of displaced Douma residents leaving the besieged city Saturday, killing a boy and wounding four others.

Images appeared on social media showing the latest victim of the Syrian conflict. Eleven-year-old Yasser Maher Sumood was shot by Assad militia fighter as a convoy of residents from the rebel-held city tried to leave.

The shooting reportedly came in response to western airstrikes targeting the regime's chemical stockpile earlier in the day.

The US, the UK and France led a wave of punitive strikes against Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime on Saturday, in response to a suspected chemical weapons attack in Douma, which killed at least 40 civilians.

A convoy of displaced from Douma were shot at by Assad’s thugs."

At least 49 people died in the suspected chemical attack in Eastern Ghouta according to medical groups and rescuers, with other estimates reaching over a hundred.

Graphic images and videos emerged on social media following Douma's alleged gas attack, showing children struggling to breathe and entire families who had succumbed to the attack on the floors of underground shelters. 

Even in their displacement they are killed

Both Syria and Russia have denied using chemical weapons and have blamed the rebels on using it on themselves to whip up international condemnation. Most independent parties and the West said Assad's forces are to blame.

Documentation of the death of the child Yasser Maher Sumood, in the addition to four others wounded during open firing of regime forces on one of the buses relocating Douma’s displaced near Selmiya city, Hama

Eastern Ghouta had been under a ruthless seven-week assault that devastated the area and killed more than 1,700 civilians, allowing Assad's forces to gain control of more than 90 percent of the former rebel stronghold.

Saturday's gas attack led local militia Jaish al-Islam to surrender the last town in the area to the Syrian regime.

Around 500,000 people have died and millions made homeless in seven years of fighting in Syria, which was sparked when regime forces brutally put down peaceful protests in 2011.