Al Arabiya, 23 February 2018— Nabil Saleh, a member of the Syrian parliament representing an area in the port city of Latakia, described the people of eastern Ghouta as “lice and rats” promising to “clean it up from the enemies of Islam and freedom”.
Saleh said on his official Facebook page that Damascus “can no longer tolerate the lice of Ghouta”, and that they will force the “Ghouta rats to return to where they belong”.
Saleh’s statements come amidst a wave of air strikes by Russia and the Assad regime targeting Ghouta the past few days, which caused the death of more than 400 people, including women and children.
Saleh discredited all the pictures and reports of death and destruction saying that they’re fabricated, and that they are actually pictures of “Palestinian victims in occupied territories”.
He called for the prosecution of all those who are against the entry of Assad regime forces into eastern Ghouta, calling it treason.
Saleh received a lot of backlash following his statements. People replied to his comment claiming that the pictures are from Palestine saying, “What you have done to Syrians is much worse than what the Zionists have done to the Palestinians”.
