UN warns of surge in attacks on Syrian civilians

           

The U.N.’s deputy humanitarian chief says attacks on civilians in Syria and their homes, schools and health facilities “have reached some of the highest levels since the conflict began” seven years ago.

Ursula Mueller told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that the needs of people in Syria also “could not be higher,” with 13.1 million people in need of aid, including some 5.6 million “in acute need.”

She said the U.N. verified 72 attacks on health facilities in the first three months of 2018, compared to 112 attacks in 2017.

Mueller says access across conflict lines also “remains extremely constricted.” She said over 160,000 people left the Damascus suburbs of eastern Ghouta between March 9 and April 15.

She says the situation in Idlib province “remains catastrophic, with almost 400,000 people displaced since mid-December, in addition to tens of thousands who were displaced from eastern Ghouta and eastern Qalamoun.”

A Syrian filmmaker says Russian state media have used images from the set of his 2016 movie to claim that video footage from an April 7 suspected poison gas attack in Syria was staged.

Humam Husari describes it as a “desperate and cheap attempt by Russian TV to deny the obvious attack on Douma.”

The April 22 reports by Russia’s Rossiya-1 and Channel One try to back up the Russian and Syrian government narrative that there was no chemical weapons attack in Douma, and that videos purporting to show victims of the attack were faked.

Husari says that in one segment, the reports use behind the scenes images from the set of his short film called “Chemical,” as it was being filmed in the eastern Ghouta region in 2016.

Husari told The Associated Press on Wednesday that his production, which is still a work in progress, is a fictional short drama based on the chemical weapons attack in Ghouta that took place in 2013.