Regime airstrikes kill 16 in Syria’s Rif Dimashq, Daraa

By Halit Suleyman and Ayse Aktas

DAMASCUS

Sixteen people were killed late Thursday when the Syrian regime carried out airstrikes east of Damascus and in the southwestern Daraa province, local sources said.

Hamza Ajwa, who works at a local field hospital, told Anadolu Agency that regime warplanes had struck the city of Douma and the town of Saqba east of the capital, both of which are located in Rif Dimashq province.

Five civilians were killed in Douma and another three in Saqba, he said.

The U.K.-based Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), for its part, reported that another eight civilians had been killed in Daraa -- while attempting to cross the border to Jordan -- by regime airstrikes.

Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which erupted as part of the "Arab Spring" uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity.

Since then, hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been killed and millions more displaced across the war-battered country.