Rocket fire kills 35 in Damascus suburb

Rockets fired on a market in a government-controlled neighborhood of Damascus on Tuesday killed 35 people and wounded more than 20 others, Syrian state-run media said, marking one of the highest death tolls in a single attack targeting the capital.

Syrian Arab News Agency quoted a police source of Damascus confirmed the attack and the number of casualties.

Haitham al-Husseini, director of Damascus Hospital, told SANA that 35 bodies were sent to the hospital.

A taxi driver, who asked not to give his name, said he was nearby when the rocket hit a street known for its cheap clothes and food shops.

"The place was full of people buying presents for Mother's Day," the 41-year-old said.

A nurse in her 30s, who asked not to be named, said the projectile hit a shopping area "next to a security checkpoint".

"The intensity of the blast was terrifying," she said.

The government blamed rebels in the eastern suburbs of Damascus for the attack on the Kashkol neighborhood. The capital has come under increasing attack as government forces continue to pound rebel-held eastern Ghouta, with military backing from Russia.

With government forces tied up in the monthlong offensive on eastern Ghouta, Islamic State militants seized a neighborhood on its southern edge, forcing the government to rush in reinforcements.

The government's assault on eastern Ghouta has displaced 45,000 people, the United Nations said Tuesday, while tens of thousands more are living in desperate conditions in northern Syria, where a Turkish military campaign is underway.

A spokesman for the UN refugee agency, Andrej Mahecic, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday that although tens of thousands have fled the fighting in eastern Ghouta, thousands more were "still trapped and in dire need of aid", adding that a shortage of shelters was "a major concern".

Meanwhile, the UN children's agency said some 100,000 people were trapped in rural areas of the northern Syrian district of Afrin and in need of humanitarian aid after Turkish and allied Syrian forces drove out a Syrian Kurdish militia there.

UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said the agency hadn't been able to deliver health and nutrition supplies to the district in 20 days, and water trucks had stopped deliveries since Thursday. The agency estimates 50,000 children are among those who need humanitarian aid in Afrin.

Shao Binglin contributed to the story.