Air strikes in east of Syrian capital kill 64 -monitoring group

Children react beside a dead body under rubble at a site hit by what activists said were two airstrikes by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Douma in eastern al-Ghouta, near Damascus August 3, 2014. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh reuters_tickers

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Air strikes by Syrian government forces in the eastern suburbs of the capital Damascus killed at least 64 people at the weekend, a monitoring group said on Tuesday.

Bombardments, gun battles and executions regularly kill over 150 people a day in Syria’s three-year-old conflict, but the toll from the air strikes was especially high.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group that tracks violence through a network of sources in Syria, said the attacks occurred in the areas of Kafr Batna and Douma in the eastern outskirts of the city.

According to the Observatory, over 170,000 people have died in Syria’s war, which is increasingly threatening to spill over into Lebanon where four days of clashes have pitted Lebanese soldiers against Sunni militants seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

(Reporting by Alexander Dziadosz; editing by John Stonestreet)