Russian President Vladimir Putin is blaming “extremist forces” for the failure of a daily five-hour “humanitarian pause” he’d ordered for the Syrian rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta earlier this week.
The United Nations Security Council and, separately, the Russian leader, had issued calls for a pause in fighting to allow civilians to leave. The UN also wanted to send urgent medical and food supplies into the besieged area.
Both calls were ignored and rebel fighters holed up in Eastern Ghouta, as well as Syrian government forces, accused each other of breaking the truce.
During a news conference in Moscow Wednesday, Putin said “extremist forces” and representatives of “terrorist organizations” had prevented civilians from leaving.
He told reporters that an agreement had been reached with “the Syrian partners.”
“We offered to organize a humanitarian corridor to get children, wounded, all those who need help out of the region … If we all join our efforts to stabilize the situation in the country in general and in Eastern Ghouta, we are bound for success,” Putin said. He didn’t elaborate on what that success might look like.
US and UN officials have accused the Russian-backed Syrian regime of carrying out an indiscriminate aerial bombardment of the area.
Gen. Joseph Votel, who oversees all US troops in the Middle East, said Tuesday that Russia was playing the role of “both arsonist and firefighter” in Syria. Votel said continued regime aerial attacks in Eastern Ghouta appeared to show that Russia is incapable of, or unwilling, to hold the regime to account.
Putin’s playThe Russian President appeared to override a UN Security Council resolution to halt hostilities for 30 days by ordering a five-hour daily truce that was to have begun on Tuesday.
The UN resolution provided little detail on when the ceasefire was meant to begin, how it would be enforced, or even whether all the parties concerned were aware of it.
Putin’s five-hour proposal was slammed by ambassadors at the UN Wednesday. United Kingdom Deputy Ambassador Jonathan Allen said it was “wholly inadequate,” and that there had been no letup in the bombing, nor had any aid workers been granted access to Eastern Ghouta.
“We have a continuation of hell on Earth,” Allen told reporters.
The French ambassador to the UN called on Russia to exert pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. “Today is not for talking,” said Francois Dellatre. “It’s about implementing the resolution.”
No ceasefire, more deathsShelling continued through the second day of the ordered pause in fighting, a media activist group and monitoring group told CNN on Wednesday.
The opposition media activist group, the Ghouta Media Center, said a surface-to-surface missile was fired on Harasta town and three mortar shells on Douma in Eastern Ghouta. The UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported similar attacks.
Activists and medical staff said they documented 24 deaths on Tuesday, the first day the pause was supposed to come into effect.
Four of the deaths were due to shelling and airstrikes. Four others died of wounds sustained from previous airstrikes and 16 were pulled from rubble in a building destroyed earlier in the week, surgeon Hamza Hassan of the Irbin Hospital in Eastern Ghouta told CNN on Wednesday.
Monitoring and activists groups claim hundreds have been killed in intensified airstrikes and shelling in recent weeks.
The Syrian government’s official news agency SANA accused “terrorist organizations” of preventing civilians from leaving for the second day in a row by shelling several safe corridors. The Syrian regime, which refers to rebels as terrorists, said shelling from Eastern Ghouta on Damascus and its rural suburbs on Tuesday killed one and injured 17, SANA reported.
Rebel groups and activists in the besieged enclave deny the accusation, saying civilians don’t want to leave because they fear arrest.
SANA reported that ambulances and buses had been waiting outside Ghouta to take civilians in to shelters.
It’s not clear how many people have been able to get out of Eastern Ghouta. Media activist Bilal Abu Sala, told CNN, that he’d seen an elderly couple evacuated through the al-Wafidain corridor by the Syrian Red Crescent. The corridor is around two kilometers (1.2 miles) northwest from the center of Duma.
The Syrian regime said its operations in the enclave were aimed at eliminating former al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front members which had “been shelling Damascus and its rural [suburbs],” SANA reported.
The main rebel units actively holding territory in Eastern Ghouta are Islamist groups Jaish al Islam and Faylaq al Rahman, who have taken part in peace negotiations in the past. According to activists there are small pockets of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, an al-Qaeda affiliate, still in the area.