Syria: Over 556 Dead in Bombing in a Week, UN & Russia Step In

Russia will establish a humanitarian corridor and implement a five-hour daily truce in Syria's eastern Ghouta, it said on Monday 26 February, after a UN Security Council resolution demanding a 30-day ceasefire across the entire country.

Over the past week Syria’s army and its allies have subjected the rebel-held enclave of eastern Ghouta near Damascus to one of the heaviest bombardments of the seven-year war, killing hundreds.

On Sunday 25 February, health authorities there said several people had suffered symptoms consistent with chlorine gas exposure and on Monday rescue workers and a war monitor said seven small children were killed by air and artillery strikes in one town.

"Eastern Ghouta cannot wait, it is high time to stop this hell on earth," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, calling for implementation of the ceasefire.

Fighting has raged across Syria since the resolution on Saturday 24 February, as Turkey presses its offensive against a Kurdish militia in Afrin, rival rebel groups fight each other in Idlib and a US-led coalition targets Islamic State in the east.

Russia's defence minister was cited by the RIA news agency as saying President Vladimir Putin had ordered a daily ceasefire in eastern Ghouta from 9 am to 2 pm each day and for the creation of a "humanitarian corridor" to allow civilians to leave.

The Russian defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, did not say whether the Syrian government or other allied forces had agreed to abide by the five-hour daily truce.

Mohamad Alloush, the political chief of one of eastern Ghouta's biggest rebel factions, said the Syrian army and its allies had launched "a sweeping ground assault" after the UN resolution, adding it was vital that the truce be implemented.

"We hope for real, serious, practical action," he said.

Over 500 Deaths in One Week

A picture issued by Civil Defence rescue workers, which Reuters could not independently verify, showed seven small bodies lying next to each other, wrapped in white and blue sheets, after air and artillery strikes on the town of Douma in eastern Ghouta.

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