UN pleads for truce to avert massacre in Ghouta
AMMAN: Warplanes pounded the last rebel enclave near the Syrian capital for a fifth straight day on Thursday as the United Nations pleaded for a ceasefire to halt one of the fiercest air assaults of the seven-year civil war and prevent a “massacre”.
At least 368 people have been killed, including 150 children, in the rural eastern Ghouta district on the outskirts of Damascus since Sunday night, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
More than 1,850 people have been wounded in the assault by Syria’s military and its allies.
Planes have struck residential areas and, according to medical charities, hit more than a dozen hospitals making it near impossible to treat the wounded.
“There is a need for avoiding (a) massacre, because we will be judged by history,” UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said.
He called on the UN Security Council to declare a ceasefire.
President Bashar al Assad’s main ally Russia, which wields a veto on the Security Council, said it could support a 30-day truce, but not one that included the militants it says the eastern Ghouta operation is meant to target.
The existing “de-escalation zone” agreement that has failed to halt fighting does not include the faction formerly known as Nusra Front, and rebels in Ghouta say it is the presence of a small number of Nusra militants that is constantly used as a pretext for the siege and bombardment of the enclave.
Searches were under way for bodies amid the rubble in the town of Saqba and elsewhere, said rescuers.
International attention is now focused on the humanitarian plight in the eastern Ghouta, where 400,000 people have been under siege for years and where government bombardment escalated sharply on Sunday, causing mass civilian casualties.