Ghouta attack defies UN ruling
SYRIA: Syrian regime forces have defied a UN ceasefire resolution by launching an alleged chemical attack and bombing rebel positions in the besieged Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta.
President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and militias backed by Iran clashed with rebels in three areas around the suburb and activists said that tens of people had died under repeated bombardment yesterday. They later claimed that shells containing chlorine had injured at least 16 people in the town of al-Shifonieh, one of them a child who later died.
On Sunday, in New York the UN security council voted through a resolution declaring a ceasefire across the country after three days of negotiations and the offer of enough concessions to Russia, a veto-holder, to secure its support. Those concessions included statements excluding attacks on groups allied to al-Qaeda or Islamic State from the agreement. The wording was vague enough to allow the Syrian ambassador to the UN to declare that he accepted the resolution but that the regime would ‘‘continue to fight terrorism wherever it is found on Syrian soil’’.
Iran made clear that it was not giving up its attempts to help the regime to retake eastern Ghouta, a collection of towns and villages that are home to 350,000 people. ‘‘Parts of the suburbs of Damascus, which are held by the terrorists, are not covered by the ceasefire and the clean-up will continue,’’ General Mohammad Baqeri, the Iranian chief of staff, said.
There was a brief pause on Sunday after the resolution was passed, but activists in eastern Ghouta said the bombardment resumed in the morning. Mohammed Abdulrahman, a journalist from the town of Douma, said the violence had continued even if it was less intense than over the past week, when more than 500 people, at least half of them women and children, were killed. ‘‘The air raids have not stopped since early morning, targeting civilians and also near the front lines,’’ he said.
Ghouta’s two dominant rebel brigades are Jaish al-Islam, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, and Failaq al-Rahman, which is broadly affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood.
There has been frequent infighting and both groups have been accused of human rights abuses. Neither, however, is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the UN. There is, though, a smaller outpost of the al-Qaedalinked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in the centre of the neighbourhood.
Both main groups accepted the ceasefire but a spokesmen said that the regime had launched a ground assault.
Hamzah Beiraqdar, a Jaish alIslam spokesman, said: ‘‘Assad forces and their loyalist militias tried to break into eastern Ghouta from several directions. Of course this breach of the ceasefire by the Assad militias was not a surprise to us.’’
The ceasefire, due to last 30 days, also allows for aid delivery and the evacuation of the severely sick and injured.