An emergency aid convoy crossed front lines into the besieged rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta on Friday, Red Cross officials said, but air strikes resumed in the area after an overnight pause.
In less than two weeks, the Syrian army has retaken nearly all the farmland in eastern Ghouta under cover of near ceaseless shelling and air strikes, leaving only a dense sprawl of towns – about half the territory – still under insurgent control. The onslaught has killed more than 1,000 people, the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Thursday.
The war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, on Friday gave a death toll of 931 civilians in the campaign. For eastern Ghouta’s civilians, trapped in underground shelters but deprived of food and water, there is a constant dilemma – whether to seek supplies or stay inside.
“People were hopeful after the bombardment decreased and went out onto the streets. But then air strikes began again, and there are still people under the rubble that we couldn’t get out,” said Moayad, a man in the town of Saqba.
Damascus and Moscow have both said the assault is needed to stop rebel shelling of the nearby capital Damascus and end the rule of insurgents over civilians in eastern Ghouta. But UN human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has said, in comments criticised by Syria’s government, that its assault was “legally, and morally, unsustainable.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross said the aid convoy passed through front lines and was heading to the enclave’s biggest town, Douma. The Observatory said there had been no air strikes on eastern Ghouta’s towns overnight for the first time since the government ground offensive began around 10 days ago, an there were only intermittent clashes along front lines.
But soon after the convoy of 13 trucks carrying food parcels crossed into eastern Ghouta, the Observatory and a witness in Douma said air strikes had resumed. A Douma resident, in a voice message over which the sounds of loud explosions were audible, said four jets were in the sky and residential areas had come under air attack.
The food parcels were supposed to be delivered on Monday when another aid convoy entered Douma, but the fighting and bombardment then forced it to leave early without unloading all its supplies. Defeat in eastern Ghouta would deal the rebels their biggest blow since the fall of Aleppo – Syria’s second city – in December 2016 by forcing them from their only significant stronghold left near Syria’s capital.
For President Bashar al-Assad, it would mark a significant victory as he builds on the military momentum created by Russia’s entry into the war in 2015 that has restored his rule over large swathes of the country.
