GENEVA, Feb 26: United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for warring sides to implement a 30-day ceasefire across Syria, in line with an appeal by major powers at the weekend.
U.N. aid agencies are ready to deliver life-saving aid and evacuate critically wounded from the rebel-held Damascus enclave of eastern Ghouta, where 400,000 people have been living under siege, Guterres said.
“Eastern Ghouta cannot wait, it is high time to stop this hell on earth,” Guterres told the U.N. Human Rights Council, which opened its main four-week annual session in Geneva.
U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein said air strikes on eastern Ghouta were continuing on Monday morning.
Air strike kills Syrian family of nine in rebel-held Ghouta - monitor
Meanwhile, a family of nine was killed in Syrian government bombardment of the rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta overnight, where air strikes and fighting have persisted despite a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire, a war monitor said on Monday.
Health authorities in opposition-run eastern Ghouta said late on Sunday that several people had suffered symptoms consistent with chlorine gas exposure, killing one child, after an explosion.
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“Eastern Ghouta cannot wait, it is high time to stop this hell on earth,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, calling for the implementation of the 30-day ceasefire sought by the Security Council.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia and Iran, has steadily clawed back control of areas where his opponents rose up against his rule in 2011. Eastern Ghouta is the last major insurgent stronghold near Damascus, the seat of his power.
The bombardment of eastern Ghouta over the past week has been one of the heaviest of Syria’s seven-year war, killing at least 522 people in seven days, according to a toll compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor.
It said two bodies had been pulled from the rubble of a home destroyed by an air strike in the Ghouta town of Douma, with seven others from the same family dead underneath.
The U.N. Security Council, including Russia, approved the resolution demanding a 30-day truce on Saturday. The intensity of the bombardment has diminished since then but has still killed two dozen people, the Observatory said.
Rebel shelling has caused 36 deaths and a number of injuries in Damascus and nearby rural areas in the last four days, Zaher Hajjo, a government health official, told Reuters.
In eastern Ghouta, people were making use of the relative lull in the bombardment to find provisions, said Moayad Hafi, a rescue worker based there.
“There is less bombardment relative to recent days. Civilians rushed from their shelters to get food and return quickly since the warplanes are still in the sky and can hit at any moment,” he told Reuters in a voice message.
Iran’s military chief of staff said on Sunday that pro-Damascus forces would press ahead with the offensive in the Damascus suburbs, saying the ceasefire did not cover parts of the Damascus suburbs “held by the terrorists”.
The main rebel factions in eastern Ghouta are Jaish al-Islam and Failaq al-Rahman. Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance of jihadist groups including the former al Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front, also has a presence there.
ACCUSATIONS OF CHEMICAL USE
Syrian state television reported that army units had directed strikes and advanced against militants near Harasta in eastern Ghouta. State news agency SANA also reported that the army had stopped a car bomb being driven into Damascus.
The Nusra Front has consistently been excluded from ceasefires in Syria, and the opposition says the government has used this as an excuse to keep up its bombardments.
The Syrian government has consistently denied using chemical weapons in the war, which will soon enter its eighth year having killed hundreds of thousands of people and forced half of Syria’s pre-war population from their homes.
Russia, which backs the Assad government, accused rebels of preparing to use toxic agents in eastern Ghouta so they could later accuse Damascus of employing chemical weapons.
In recent weeks, the United States has accused Syria of repeatedly using chlorine gas as a weapon. Rebel-held areas of the Ghouta region were hit in a major chemical attack in 2013.
