Napalm bombs set homes ablaze in Damascus suburbs

Incendiary bombs were dropped from Syrian regime planes on residential areas of Damascus on Monday, killing dozens as flames gutted homes and shops.
2 min read
07 November, 2016
Douma has been set ablaze by napalm bombs [Anadolu]
Syrian regime and Russian war planes dropped napalm and bombs on an opposition suburb of Damascus on Monday setting the town alight.

Footage from Douma showed the residential district ablaze as rescue workers desperately tried to douse out fires and retrieve the injured and dead from their homes.

Dozens of people have already been killed in the attack and most of the victims are believed to be women and children, activists said.

One said that regime war planes purposely selected residential areas to drop the incendiary bombs to cause maximum damage on the civilian population.

Damascus has seen a massive population transfer from the suburbs this year, and once solidly rebel suburbs are falling to the regime after being subject to sieges, gas attacks and bombing.

"Today we [were] hit by napalm missiles. It was so close to me it makes everything red and black," Firas Abdullah from the Eastern Ghouta neighbourhood wrote on his Facebook page. 

Among the 20 seriously injured were babies aned images shared by activists showed medics placing dead children in body bags.

A day earlier, air raids killed at least two people in the neighbourhood, which has been under siege for over three years.

The regime has intensified its shelling and bombing in Ghouta this week, which has already seen some of the most worst bloodshed in the war.

In August, Human Rights Watch said the joint Syrian-Russian military operation has been using incendiary weapons, "which burn their victims and start fires, in civilian areas of Syria in violation of international law". 

The first attack using napalm-like substances may have taken place in August 2012, a year after the uprising began, in Orum al-Kubra and al-Atarib, towns in the Aleppo countryside.

Thirty-eight people were killed in Orum al-Kubra, according to the Centre for the Documentation of Violations in Syria