World leaders urge cease-fire to stop carnage
BEIRUT — World leaders called Thursday for an urgent cease-fire in Syria as government forces pounded the opposition-controlled eastern suburbs of the capital in a crushing campaign that has left hundreds of people dead in recent days.
The U.N. Security Council heard a briefing from U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock on what he called “the humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes” in the rebel-held suburbs known as eastern Ghouta.
Sweden and Kuwait were seeking a vote on a resolution ordering a 30-day cease-fire to allow relief agencies to deliver aid and evacuate the critically sick and wounded from besieged areas to receive medical care.
But Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, who called Thursday’s meeting, put forward last-minute amendments, saying the proposed resolution was “simply unrealistic.”
Russia’s amendments would rule out an immediate cease-fire and instead demand that all parties “stop hostilities as soon as possible” and “work for an immediate and unconditional deescalation of violence” and 30-day “humanitarian pause.”
The Russian proposal would also condemn the “relentless shelling” of Damascus from eastern Ghouta, and deplore “the ongoing attempts by terrorist groups to retake areas and attack civilians and civilian objects.”
In eastern Ghouta, medical workers said they hadn’t been able to see their families for days as they worked round the clock at hospitals that have been moved underground to protect them from bombing, while their spouses and children stay in shelters.
“You can’t be above ground for even 15 minutes,” said a nurse in the town of Kafr Batna, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect the identity of family members still living in government areas.
In the background, the deep boom of a bomb could be heard exploding as the nurse spoke by Skype to The Associated Press. He said a barrel bomb had fallen less than one-third mile away.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said 400 people, including dozens of children, have been killed since Sunday.
Also Thursday, the Trump administration says it doesn’t need new legal authority from Congress to indefinitely keep U.S. military forces deployed in Syria and Iraq, the New York Times reported.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said U.S. troops will stay in Syria to curb Iran and prevent the Syrian government from reconquering rebel-held areas.