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Air strike kills family of nine in rebel-held Ghouta

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BEIRUT: A family of nine was killed in a Syrian government strike on Eastern Ghouta, a war monitor said on Monday, as Russia said a truce demanded by the United Nations Security Council would only take effect when all sides agreed how to implement it.


Fighting has continued in Syria since Saturday’s Security Council resolution calling for a 30-day ceasefire. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it would not apply to the army’s battle with “terrorists” in Eastern Ghouta.


Health authorities in Eastern Ghouta said several people had suffered symptoms consistent with chlorine gas exposure, killing one child.


“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 30-day ceasefire.


Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, backed by allies, 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.


Fighting is raging elsewhere in Syria too, 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 IS in the east.


The bombardment of Eastern Ghouta over the past week has been one of the heaviest of Syria’s seven-year war, killing at least 556 people in eight 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 UN 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 more than 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, said.


A Western diplomat in Geneva said it was “not clear if (the truce) will be implemented today or tomorrow, or at all”, adding: “The situation is catastrophic if not out of control.”


RELATIVE LULL: In Eastern Ghouta, people were making use of a relative lull in the bombardment to find provisions, said Moayad Hafi, a rescue worker based there.


“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 said 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”.


Lavrov said the ceasefire would not cover either the Ahrar al-Sham or the Jaish al-Islam factions, describing them as partners of the former Al Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front.


The two major rebel factions in Eastern Ghouta are Jaish al-Islam and Failaq al-Rahman. Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance of militants including Nusra, also has a small presence there.


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 of about 23 million from their homes.


— Reuters


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