Ghouta bleeds as UN strives for peace
beirut — A new wave of bombs struck Syria’s eastern Ghouta district unabated on Friday, witnesses said, ahead of a UN Security Council vote to demand a 30-day ceasefire to end one of the deadliest bombing campaigns of the war.
For a sixth straight day, warplanes flown by government forces and their allies have pounded the densely populated enclave east of the capital, the last rebel bastion near Damascus.
The civilian casualties and devastation there are among the worst in Syria since the government captured rebel-held parts of Aleppo in intense fighting in 2016.
At least 462 people have been killed and many hundreds injured, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group says. The dead include at least 99 children.
Eyes were on Moscow, and whether President Bashar Al Assad’s veto-wielding ally would support the UN Security Council’s draft ceasefire resolution, block it, or seek to water it down in a way that would let bombing go on. Previous ceasefires have a poor record of ending fighting on the ground in Syria, and Moscow has a history of blocking Security Council measures that would harm Assad’s interests.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was ready to vote for a draft ceasefire resolution, but accused the United States and allies of refusing to amend it to include guarantees that militants would honour it, Interfax news agency reported.
Syria’s government, with its allies Russia, Iran and militias, has often used the tactic of pushing rebels to surrender their strongholds after long sieges and military offensives. —
douma (syria) — Syrian government air strikes and artillery fire hit the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta for a sixth straight day on Friday as the world struggled to reach a deal to stop the carnage.
More than 450 civilians have been killed in one of the seven-year Syrian conflict’s bloodiest episodes and rescuers were finding more bodies buried in the rubble.
Russia, whose warplanes are also bombing the Eastern Ghouta region, stalled a deal at the United Nations for a 30-day humanitarian ceasefire late on Thursday but a vote was rescheduled for later Friday.
Few of the enclave’s estimated 400,000 residents — mostly living in a scattering of towns across the semi-rural area east of the capital — ventured out on Friday.
A correspondent in Douma, Eastern Ghouta’s main town, saw a handful of people stealthily crossing rubble-strewn streets to assess damage to their property or look for food and water.
But death has fallen from the sky relentlessly since government and allied forces intensified their bombardment on Sunday and rocket fire soon forced everybody to run for cover.
Exhausted and famished families cowered in cramped and damp basements, exchanging information on the latest casualties of the government’s blitz.
Some of the only people braving the threat of more bombardment were medical staff in those hospitals still standing and rescuers sifting through the wreckage of levelled buildings.
The new strikes on Friday killed at least nine people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“The air strikes and the artillery fire are continuing on several towns in Eastern Ghouta,” Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britainbased monitoring group, said.
He said that five of the nine people killed on Friday died in air strikes on Douma, the main town in the enclave east of Damascus, and that two of them were children.
The latest deaths brought to 462 the number of people killed since the Syrian government and its Russian ally intensified their bombardment of the besieged area on February 18. More than 2,000 people have been wounded.
“The death toll is likely to go up, there are many wounded in critical condition and victims trapped in the rubble,” said Abdel Rahman.
Diplomats at the United Nations failed to clinch Russian approval late on Thursday on a resolution calling for a 30-day truce to allow for humanitarian aid and medical evacuations.
They then announced that a vote would take place on Friday but did not make clear whether they had rallied Moscow to a new draft.
The latest text softens language in a key provision to say that the council “demands” a ceasefire instead of “decides”.
It also specifies that the ceasefire will not apply to “individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated” with Al Qaeda and the Daesh group. A previous version simply mentioned the two groups.
World leaders have expressed outrage at the plight of civilians in Eastern Ghouta, which UN chief Antonio Guterres called “hell on earth”, but have so far been powerless to halt the bloodshed.
“The UN says it is concerned and calls for a ceasefire, France condemns, but they have given us nothing,” said Abu Mustafa, one of the few civilians on the streets of Douma on Friday morning.
“Every day we have strikes, destruction. This would draw tears from a rock, there is nobody who hasn’t lost a member of their family,” said the 50-year-old, who was escorting a wounded person to hospital.
The enclave has been controlled by militants and hardline groups since 2012. —
the eu is running out of words to describe the horror being experienced by the people of eastern Ghouta Federica Mogherini, EU foreign policy chief
Without russia backing Syria, the devastation and the deaths would certainly not be occurring in Ghouta Heather Nauert, State Department spokeswoman
When an entire generation is robbed of its future,… the international community must take urgent action Mark Lowcock, UN humanitarian chief
tens of thousands of people have died in eastern Ghouta alone, and that is enough, these people must not die Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish Foreign Minister