PUTIN ORDERS FIVE-HOUR STAY FOR STRIKES ON EASTERN GHOUTA
▶ Humanitarian pause as UN Secretary General calls for immediate 30-day truce in ‘hell on Earth’
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered a five-hour pause in military action in Eastern Ghouta from today for humanitarian relief, his Defence Minister said.
“On the instructions of the Russian president with the goal of avoiding civilian casualties in Eastern Ghouta, on February 27, from 9am to 2pm, there will be a humanitarian pause,” Sergey Shoigu said yesterday.
Air strikes on the Damascus suburbs have killed more than 500 people in the past week, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Yesterday, Syrian regime shelling killed nine members of one family as its forces tried to enter the rebel-held suburbs.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for the immediate implementation of a Security Council resolution ordering a 30-day ceasefire.
“Eastern Ghouta cannot wait. It is high time to stop this hell on Earth,” Mr Guterres said.
The UN passed the resolution on Saturday after the heaviest bombardment of the rebel enclave since the Syrian government’s forces first besieged it in 2013. The siege has cut off as many as 400,000 people and created an increasingly desperate humanitarian situation. Eastern Ghouta is the last significant territory the rebels hold near the capital.
Regime ground forces encountered stiff resistance yesterday as they tried to push into the enclave, with rebel groups destroying government tanks and an armoured bulldozer.
Moscow yesterday denied that the Syrian government was responsible for a chlorine gas attack in the area that killed a child and injured others.
In 2013, the Syrian government, with Russian backing, agreed to a deal with the US to dismantle all of its chemical weapons after a sarin gas attack killed up to 1,400 people in Eastern Ghouta.
But Damascus has been accused of using chemical weapons, mostly chlorine, on dozens of occasions since.
Although conventional weapons have caused most fatalities in Eastern Ghouta in the war, Syria and Russia have been accused of using cluster bombs in the suburbs, as well as fuel air bombs. Neither is among the 108 signatories of the Convention on Cluster Munitions that bans use of the weapons.
Moscow has also denied taking part in the recent campaign of air and artillery strikes in Eastern Ghouta. Its intervention on behalf of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, which began in 2015, has been instrumental in turning the tide of the conflict in the regime’s favour.
Also yesterday, French President Emmanuel Macron told Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the UN ceasefire resolution must be implemented in all of Syria, including the area around the northern city of Afrin. Ankara last month launched an offensive against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin.
But on Sunday, the Turkish government said the proposed UN ceasefire would not affect its operation, which it claims is fighting “terrorist organisations that threaten the territorial integrity and political unity of Syria”.
Turkey sent special forces to Afrin yesterday in preparation for renewing the operation against the YPG. Turkish forces and Syrian militia allies appear to have captured 150 kilometres of the Syrian side of the border with Turkey, where Kurdish forces were operating.